Table of Contents · IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre Frank Laczco and Jasper Tjaden 60 Section News 64 Member Achievements 64 Incoming Officers 65 Recent Books and Articles

http://community.apsanet.org/migrationcitizenship/home

1

Table of Contents Letter from the Co-Presidents 2

Citizenship, Authoritarianism, and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy 2

Letter from the Co-Editors 6

Symposium “Seeing Statelessness: at the interstices of sovereignty, self-determination and discrimination” 8

Introduction Kristy A. Belton 8

What does the position of Roma in Europe indicate about minority statelessness? 12 Julija Sardelić

Statelessness in the Dominican Republic: A new turn in Anti-Haitianism Bridget Wooding 21

From citizen to stateless – the lost rights: Examples from Bahrain 28 Zeineb Alsabeehg

Statelessness and the struggle to close the gap in human rights through legal empowerment: The Palermo Convention employed as a conduit 37

Tanya Faye Herring Voluntary Statelessness: Reflections on Implications for International Relations and Political Theory

Jocelyn Kane 44

Policy Brief 54 “Legal Identity” and Biometric Identification in Africa

Bronwen Manby 54

Research Institute Profile 60 IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre

Frank Laczco and Jasper Tjaden 60

Section News 64 Member Achievements 64 Incoming Officers 65

Recent Books and Articles 66

Newsletter of the American Political Science Association’s Organized Section on Migration and Citizenship

ISSN 2578-2207

Summer 2018, Vol. 6, No. 2


Seeing_Statelessness:#_Symposium_

Seeing_Statelessness:#_Symposium_


2

Letter from the Co-Presidents

Citizenship, Authoritarianism, and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy

Today, once again, we are witnessing the great paradox of liberal democracy, one that

Carl Popper was keenly aware of: the threat to open societies does not always come

from outside the gates, it often comes from within. Western liberal democracies rose

out of the ashes of World War II and led to the longest period of peace that the modern

world has known. It was those war experiences and the knowledge that millions of peo-

ple died in the name of ethnic nationalism, communism, and fascism, that led to the es-

tablishment of open societies striving to be inclusive of the other and supportive of the

weak.

These days, we live in an era when more and more immigrants from all over the

world are seeking to share into the material and moral riches of the West, embracing

the political, social, and cultural values of liberal democracy. Often required by law, they

shed headscarves and native tongues along with other cultural and social practices and

beliefs. Data from multiple countries tell us that immigrants are net contributors to

Western economies (the story for refugees is more complicated given the conditions

under which they are admitted), they display lower levels of criminality, they are patriotic

(in the U.S. thousands have served in the military and have been welcomed to do so,

until recent efforts by the Trump administration to purge the ranks), and they are the

strongest hope for stemming the Western demographic crisis and the associated crisis

of the welfare state.

At the same time, a portion of the native-born population, those raised in the con-

text of liberal ideals and institutions, feel so threatened by Spanish or Turkish or Arabic

spoken on the train platform and the supermarket line, by the chanting call of the muez-

zin, and the different color of skin of the people in their midst, that they become willing

to sacrifice liberal norms and institutions built with great sacrifice and over many dec-

ades. Ultra-nationalist, authoritarian leaders and parties have cropped up in almost

every Western democracy attacking liberal values and institutions, but promising protec-

tion of cultural homogeneity.

Alexandra Filindra, University of Illinois at Chicago

Sara Wallace Goodman,

University of California,

Irvine



3

Many of these leaders are making a Faustian bargain: stop the entry of immi-

grants but also muzzle the opposition by controlling media and courts, while targeting

opposing elites and their supporters for investigation and prosecution. Turkey’s Erdogan

jailed journalists and academics who resisted his efforts to consolidate power. Hunga-

ry’s Orban mocked the idea that citizens are “free to do anything that does not violate

another person’s freedom,” and forced through constitutional changes to centralize

power in the executive. Poland’s Law & Justice party claiming “politicization of courts,”

enacted sweeping reforms of the judiciary designed to bring judges under government

control. In France, Austria, the Netherlands, the UK, and elsewhere parties that prom-

ise to prevent and even reverse immigration, close the borders to outsides, and “de-

islamize” and restore ethnoreligious homogeneity to their societies.

The story is the same across the Atlantic. The rise of Donald Trump in the United

States has been accompanied by the blatant disregard if not contempt for the country’s

egalitarian social norms, the politicization of the administrative state, and efforts to

change electoral rules to cement party advantages and prevent the opposition from

gaining ground. From extreme gerrymandering, to voter-ID laws, to proposed constitu-

tional amendments to exclude non-citizens from the official population count, to calls for

the impeachment, replacement, or “packing” of state high court justices issuing deci-

sions that political leaders dislike, the U.S. has witnessed it all in the span of a decade.

Recent data from the United States paint an alarming picture. The 2016 ANES

suggests that significant proportions of white Americans—the political majority group—

have embraced authoritarian populism. More than a third of whites endorse having a

strong leader even if he bends the rules; half want a leader who will “crush evil” and

take us back to the “true path”; and just shy of a majority want the authorities to get rid

of “rotten apples” who are ruining everything (Figure 1).

“Recent data from the United States paint an alarming pic-ture...significant proportions of white Americans…have embraced

authoritarian populism”



4

An online survey of white Americans conducted in March 2018 confirms the troubling

trends with some additional very disconcerting insights. The best news is that only a fifth

of our white compatriots think that the President should shut down Congress and gov-

ern alone but twice as many (38%) believe that under some circumstances, an unelect-

ed government is preferred to an elected one. A similar proportion (39%) think that

there are circumstances that would justify a military takeover of the American govern-

ment. Almost half (45%) of white Americans believe that the media have too much

freedom in expressing political views, and more than half (55%) would like a leader with

an iron fist. Finally, 58% of our white compatriots think that the federal government

poses a threat to the rights and freedoms of citizens.

Across the West, the activation of social identities based on race, ethnicity, language, or

religion and the politics that surround them threaten to upend liberal democratic polities.

In the context of increased social diversity, portions of the public are willing to support

calls for an exclusionary moral community of virtue at the expense of norms and institu-

37%

52%

47%

Having a strong leader in government is good for theUnited States even if the leader bends the rules to get

things done.

Our country really needs a strong, determined leader whowill crush evil and take them back to their true path.

Our country would be great if they honor the ways of ourforefathers, do what the authorities tell them to do, and get

rid of the 'rotten apples' who are ruining everything.

Figure 1. Support for non-democratic norms (2016 ANES, whites only)

21%

38%

39%

45%

55%

58%

When things get tough, the President shouldshut down Congress and govern on his own

Under some circumstances, an un-electedgovernment may be better than an elected one

Under some circumstances, it would bejustified for the military to take over…

The news media are allowed too muchfreedom in criticizing elected leaders

Our country needs leaders with an iron fist

The federal government poses a threat to therights and freedoms of ordinary citizens

Figure 2. Support for Anti-democratic Institutions & Norms (March 2018 Qualtrics Survey)



5

tions of democracy. Several recent studies suggest that high support for anti-democratic

leaders, ideas, and institutions is not the result of the economic dislocations produced

by globalization. Rather, we can find the source of this anti-democratic shift in anxieties

related to the presence and political empowerment of racial and ethnic out-groups in our

midst. Hence the paradox of liberal democracy: many of our fellow citizens, raised with

access to the privileges afforded by liberal democratic institutions, are willing to give up

hard-won rights and guarantees, in exchange for assurances that their cultural and so-

cial primacy will be respected and maintained.

The challenge for our section today is to look at the relationship between citizen-

ship, immigration, identity, and democracy through fresh eyes. All regimes, but more so

democratic regime, require public support for their legitimacy and survival. As scholars

from Aristotle to Machiavelli to modern day civic republicans have warned, republics

collapse when the people give up on them and are lured by the promises of power-

hungry leaders. This is the time to ask ourselves if we know enough about what the av-

erage Jane and Joe think when presented with terms such as democracy, citizenship,

or rights. Contrary to our idealistic normative assumptions, citizens do not have a princi-

pled or ideologically constrained approach to democracy any more than they have a

principled approach to governance and policy. Rather, they may be prone to understand

democracy through the lens of group memberships. When the social position of cher-

ished groups is perceived as threatened, and when trusted in-group elites use narra-

tives of group threat and out-group dehumanization to justify anti-democratic actions,

group members may become more vulnerable to authoritarian leaders and parties that

promise protection or restoration of the group’s status but at the cost of institutional de-

mocracy. Developing theories as well as empirical analyses that explain the likely con-

tingent relationship between citizens their value systems and their institutions, and thus

address the paradox of liberal democracy in a substantive way, should be a top priority

for us as scholars and as citizens.

To contact the Co-Presidents, email Alexandra Filindra ([email protected])

and Sara Wallace Goodman ([email protected]).

“The challenge for our section today is to look at the relationship between citizenship, immigration, identity, and democracy

through fresh eyes”


mailto:[email protected]



6

Letter from the Co-Editors

The main focus of this issue is the symposium on statelessness organized by Kristy.

This topic allows us to pursue one of the central aims of our section, namely to bring

together migration and citizenship research. While there are many research questions

that are specific to these two fields, it is often difficult to understand developments in

one field without investigating related aspects in the other field. “Statelessness” is an

excellent example for the close connection between migration and citizenship issues: it

is about people who have no citizenship, a situation that is created, not exclusively but

often, after people have migrated to another country.

The symposium also fulfills another aim this newsletter has been pursuing over

the last years: while there is an abundance of research in our fields on North America

and Western Europe, other world regions have been neglected to a large extent so far.

The various contributions of the symposium cover such diverse places as the Domini-

can Republic, Bahrain, the Baltic States and South-East Asia. The policy piece by

Bronwen Manby on biometric identities in Africa presents a topic tightly related to state-

lessness and covers yet another continent.

It appears in the various contributions of the symposium that data availability is a

recurrent issue as it is often difficult to get a detailed picture of how many people are

stateless, where and for which reasons. This is of course a problem many migration and

citizenship scholars know. The Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GDMAC) that

was established by the UN Migration Agency (IOM) in Berlin in 2015 and that is pre-

Kristy A. Belton International Stud-

ies Association

Marc Helbling University of Bamberg

Kristy A. Belton International Studies

Association



7

sented in this issue aims at addressing this problem by supporting data-capacity build-

ing and more generally providing existing datasets through the Migration Data Portal.

This is our last issue before we hand over the editorship to our successors Fiona

Barker and Ruxandra Paul. It has been a great time editing this newsletter over the last

four years. It allowed us to get to know a lot of colleagues and learn about new topics

and research institutions we did not yet know. We are most grateful to all authors who

contributed to the various newsletter sections over the last four years. It goes without

saying that there would be no newsletter without such an active Section. And these ac-

tivities show that the Migration and Citizenship Section constitutes a vibrant community

with a strong identity. Finally, we also like to thank our editorial assistants Andrea

Pürckhauer, Helga Nützel and Jakob Biernath who helped us with various aspects over

the last years.

All the best,

Marc and Kristy

To contact the Newsletter Co-Editors, email Marc Helbling (marc.helbling@uni-

bamberg.de) and Kristy A. Belton ([email protected]).


mailto:[email protected])




8

Symposium “Seeing Statelessness: at the inter-stices of sovereignty, self-determination and dis-crimination”

Introduction

Symposium Coordinator & Introductory Essay Author, Kristy A. Bel-ton, Director of Professional Development, International Studies As-sociation & Senior Programme Officer, Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion

The world recently welcomed the rescue of the Wild Boars football team, a group of 12

youths and their coach, who had been stuck for over two weeks in an area of Sam Lu-

ang cave in Thailand, which had become flooded during a monsoon downpour. Among

those children was Abdul Sam-on, a 14-year old boy who has been heralded as a hero

for acting as an interpreter during the rescue. While the world got to know Sam-on and

the rest of his team during these past few weeks, he was invisible to the eyes of the

State. Sam-on, along with two of his teammates and his coach, is stateless. No country

recognizes and claims them as its citizens.

While most are familiar with the stateless Rohingya of Burma—where more than

600,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh and other neighboring countries because of

persecution in Burma since August 2017—fewer are familiar with the other stateless

groups in the region. Sam-on and the other stateless members of his soccer team are

part of tribal groups, or ethnic minorities, who are not counted among the citizens of the

States in the region (whether Thailand, Burma or Laos). They therefore present another

face of statelessness,1 illustrating the complexities that arise around who is allowed to

formally belong to the body politic (the “State”) in a region where ethnic diversity is im-

mense and where peoples have moved back and forth across State borders for centu-

ries.

The case of Sam-on and his stateless teammates brings to the fore the difficul-

ties in fulfilling each person’s human right to a nationality. Unlike many of the other hu-

man rights that we find articulated in the United Nations’ (UN) Universal Declaration of

Human Rights (UDHR) and in UN human rights treaties, the human right to a nationality

is not currently one that can be fulfilled by any other actor other than the State (through

its authorized representative). International law is clear that it is up to each State to de-

termine who should formally belong via citizenship, and States—while not allowed to

“arbitrarily” deprive people of citizenship—are allowed to do so on a host of grounds

1 Nearly half a million people are registered as stateless within Thailand alone, but this figure is likely “un-derstated” because many individuals have not undergone the statelessness registration process (Wongcha-um and Pearson 2018).



9

from reasons of “public order” and “public safety” to “national security.” In this highly

securitized post-9/11 environment, these allegedly non-arbitrary reasons have taken on

an amorphous shape such that a variety of citizen “actions” or “activities” are made to

fall under these grounds. Several of the case studies addressed in this Symposium

serve as cases in point.

In her article, “Stateless in the Dominican Republic: A New Turn in Anti-

Haitianism,” Bridget Wooding explains how a 2013 constitutional court ruling in the

Dominican Republic resulted in the creation of a permanent underclass who could be

exploited for the Dominican State’s economic gain. Her article demonstrates how the

creation of stateless persons can generate humanitarian problems across borders, and

also shows the ways in which human migration can be intimately tied to statelessness.

As her article demonstrates, however, the root of statelessness in the Dominican Re-

public is racism or its Dominican equivalent of “anti-Haitianism.”

Rendering people stateless because of perceived ethnic differences also lies at

the heart of the case study that Zeineb Alsabeehg discusses in her article, “From citi-

zen to stateless – the lost rights: Examples from Bahrain.” Alsabeehg’s article adds an-

other layer to the citizenship deprivation tool wielded by States, as it shows that even

those who are “natural born” (that is, they are not naturalized citizens) can have their

citizenship revoked if the State deems that they are a national security threat and/or

have committed an act of treason. Her piece illustrates how the use of denationalization

is not simply a tool of authoritarian governments during the World Wars’ era, but re-

mains a tactical tool in the present as well. While Alsabeehg’s piece demonstrates the

impact of statelessness upon a person’s (and his/her family’s) ability to enjoy other hu-

man rights, it serves as a reminder that what the States give (citizenship), they can also

take away.

Moving from the Caribbean and the Gulf States, Julija Sardelić’s article invites

us to explore the case of Europe when it comes to statelessness. Her work reveals that

statelessness is not a “one size fits all” condition as it is possible to enjoy some rights,

even as a stateless person. In “Complex Realities of Minority Statelessness in Europe

and Beyond,” Sardelić shows how stateless Russian speaking minorities in the Baltic

States of Estonia and Latvia enjoy basic rights and a certain level of protection, but oth-

er minorities, such as the Roma, are less likely to enjoy such rights and protections in

their respective European-country residences. Her piece thus demonstrates how indi-

viduals can still live and be treated “as if” they were stateless, even when they do not

necessarily fall under the international legal definition of a stateless person.

Regardless of whether an individual is “de facto” (“as if” or “in practice”) stateless

or whether she or he is “de jure” stateless (recognized as such under international law),

a stateless person is always vulnerable to having any and all rights and protections ne-

gated. In many countries, the stateless can be denied marriage and birth certificates.

They can be easily trafficked or indefinitely detained. They can be relegated to specific



10

geographical spaces within a country, eking out an existence on its fringes. They can be

denied access to all government services and benefits of the country in which they were

born. They can, in essence, be denied the ability to be a self-determining agent.2

The institution of citizenship is so vital to the way in which the world is ordered,

and the way in which States manage people, no internationally recognized right to be

voluntarily stateless exists. Even the human rights treaties that include the human right

to a nationality are typically clear that a person cannot be deprived of citizenship unless

she or he has another nationality first. In fact, citizenship is so important to our ability to

be in the world that Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the drafters of the UDHR, stated that she

considered the human right to a nationality to be one of three rights that were of “vital

importance” (the other two being the right to freedom of conscience/religion and the

right to take part in the government of her or his country without discrimination) (Roose-

velt 1948). Despite the problems associated with statelessness, however, there are

those who give up their citizenship and choose to become voluntarily stateless.

As Jocelyn Kane explains in her piece, “Voluntary Statelessness: Reflections on

Implications for International Relations and Political Theory,” whether as an act of re-

sistance against State policies they did not like, or because they were autonomous poli-

ties before being colonized by “the State,” individuals give up or reject citizenship. Kane

examines the implications of voluntarily statelessness on our understanding of sover-

eignty, global governance, membership and the social contract, demonstrating how the

existence of voluntarily stateless persons and groups challenges some of our key pre-

cepts of how the world is understood.

Moving from the realm of political theory to international law, Tanya Faye Her-

ring’s piece on “Statelessness and the struggle to close the gap in human rights

through legal empowerment,” investigates how we can use existing treaties, as well as

domestic legal tools, to address statelessness. Moving beyond the law, her piece also

shows us how statelessness and indigenity intersect in the Southeast Asian context.

This Symposium thus includes a diversity of perspectives on statelessness, writ-

ten both by practitioners and academics hailing from various countries. Although they

come from different disciplinary and regional contexts, and do not necessarily approach

statelessness in the same manner, they all share an important commonality— member-

ship in the International Network of Statelessness Scholars (INOSS).3 They are thus

part of the budding community of individuals who are working to address statelessness

in its various facets and who make up the larger global effort to end statelessness.

In 2014, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the

body mandated with the identification and protection of stateless people, and the reduc-

2 For an in-depth argument on the relationship between citizenship and self-determination as it relates to statelessness, see Belton (2017). 3 For further information on INOSS, or to become a member, please visit: http://www.institutesi.org/forum/academic.php.


http://www.institutesi.org/forum/academic.php


11

tion of statelessness globally, launched the #IBelong campaign.4 Its primary goal is to

end statelessness by 2024. While we are no closer to ending global statelessness once

and for all—there’s simply too many ways in which statelessness arises and the dis-

crimination that underlies each of these paths means that statelessness cannot simply

be removed via legal and technical means—positive momentum has been built, espe-

cially in the civil society and academic realms. Various regional networks have been

created in the past half decade: from the European Network on Statelessness, the

Americas Network on Nationality and Statelessness to the Statelessness Network Asia

Pacific and the Central Asian Network on Statelessness. Even more human-rights and

law-based NGO’s and practices are incorporating the stateless as a population of con-

cern in their work, and the world’s first center dedicated to the study of statelessness

became fully operational this year at the University of Melbourne.5

Furthermore, the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI), which was

launched in 2014 and which serves as the primary global convenor of statelessness

experts and interested parties, is set to hold the first World Conference on Stateless-

ness and Inclusion in June 20196 at the half-way point of UNCHR’s #IBelong campaign.

We thus find ourselves at an opportune time to reflect upon the progress made in ad-

dressing statelessness and all of its challenges. We hope that you learn more about

statelessness through reading this Symposium and that many of you will join the INOSS

community, each acting in your own spheres of research and influence so that the sto-

ries of individuals like Sam-on, and others like him, do not go unheard or unaddressed.

References

Belton. Kristy A. 2017. Statelessness in the Caribbean: The Paradox of Belonging in a

Postnational World. University of Pennsylvania Press. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1948. “The Promise of Human Rights.” Foreign Affairs 26: 470-477. Wongcha-Um, Panu and James Pearson. 2018. “Cave rescue highlights plight of Thailand’s

stateless people.” Reuters. July 14. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-accident-cave-stateless/cave-rescue-highlights-plight-of-thailands-stateless-people-idUSKBN1K40F6.

4 For further information on the #IBelong Campaign, please visit: http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/. 5 To find out more about the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, housed at the University of Mel-bourne’s Law School, please visit: https://law.unimelb.edu.au/study/graduate-research-degrees/fees-and-scholarships/statelessness-phd-scholarship. 6 For more information on the June 2019 conference, please visit: http://www.institutesi.org/forum/conference.php.

Please direct inquiries about the Symposium’s Introductory article to Kristy A. Belton ([email protected]).


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-accident-cave-stateless/cave-rescue-highlights-plight-of-thailands-stateless-people-idUSKBN1K40F6

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-accident-cave-stateless/cave-rescue-highlights-plight-of-thailands-stateless-people-idUSKBN1K40F6

http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/

https://law.unimelb.edu.au/study/graduate-research-degrees/fees-and-scholarships/statelessness-phd-scholarship

https://law.unimelb.edu.au/study/graduate-research-degrees/fees-and-scholarships/statelessness-phd-scholarship

http://www.institutesi.org/forum/conference.php



12

What does the position of Roma in Europe indicate about minority statelessness?

Julija Sardelić, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral

Fellow, University of Leuven, Belgium

Introduction The 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless

Persons defines a stateless person as an individual “who is

not considered as a national by any state under the opera-

tion of its law” (1954 Convention). According to UNHCR data, there are approximately

10 million people around the globe who fall under this definition (UNHCR 2018) due to

reasons such as: “conflicts of laws, discrimination,

state succession, the legacy of colonization, arbi-

trary deprivation of nationality, administrative bar-

riers and lack of documentation, inheritance of

statelessness” (Institute for Statelessness and In-

clusion, 2018). In 2017, UNHCR published a report according to which 75 % of state-

less people around the globe belong to minorities (UNHCR 2017). This report also

showed a recognition by UNHCR that the 1954 Convention was a product of its time. It

addressed the challenges the world was facing due to the Second World War (WWII):

the time when millions of refugees were wandering around Europe without any state to

claim them as citizens, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt (1968). Since WWII, the geopoliti-

cal landscape has changed massively and it is not only those individuals falling under

the 1954 Convention’s definition of statelessness who experience the “abstract naked-

ness of being nothing but a human” (Arendt 1968: 299-300). It also extends to the peo-

ple who under the operation of state’s law were supposed be granted the protection of

citizenship, yet they are unable to access it.

As I argued in my previous work (Sardelić 2015), de facto stateless individuals

find themselves in a legal limbo not protected by their own states, but also not falling

under the protection of the 1954 Convention. UNHCR is increasingly recognizing this

fact by including the position of Roma who have hindered access to citizenship as a part

of its mission. As the 2011 UNHCR report on Statelessness in Southeast Europe

showed, many more individuals do not in a strict sense fall into the category of de jure

statelessness but are at “risk of becoming stateless” (UNHCR 2011). Yet at the same

time they have more hindered access to basic human rights than those who were rec-

ognized as stateless (Swider 2018, Blitz 2018). This paper contextualizes the position of

Roma who face statelessness with other occurrences of minority statelessness in Eu-

rope, and also draws examples from around the globe. It uses a socio-legal analysis to

show that different domestic laws, as well as international conventions, can create dif-

“75 % of stateless people around the globe belong

to minorities”



13

ferent scales of legal realities surrounding the phenomenon of statelessness. The ques-

tion that the paper aims to answer is whether there are any particular features of minori-

ty statelessness and whether/how is the statelessness that Romani minorities experi-

ence distinguishable from that which others experience?

Complex Realities of Minority Statelessness in Europe and Beyond In Europe, the largest number of recognized stateless minorities belongs to Russian

speakers in two Post-Soviet Baltic countries, Latvia and Estonia. From around 600,000

recognized stateless people in Europe 240,000 are located in Latvia and 85,000 in Es-

tonia (Minority Rights International 2017). In the Soviet period, there was a state-

sponsored policy that encouraged Russian speakers to (then internally) migrate to the

two Baltic countries in question. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Latvian

and Estonian states adopted citizenship policies and law that stated that they did not

become independent states in 1991 (no state succession) but, instead, ended an occu-

pation of the Soviet Union. Russian speakers were perceived as a part of the former

dominant majority who ended up in Latvia and Estonia as a part of the occupation plan.

Only those residents of Latvia and Estonia who were either born there before 16/17

June, 1940 or were their descendants, became citizens of the two respective countries

(Kuczyńska-Zonik 2017). Most Russian speakers, who had settled there after these

dates, had to go through the process of naturalization, which included a citizenship test

and majority language proficiency. Therefore, a great number of them remained state-

less.

Yet, as a number of scholars have argued (Kuczyńska-Zonik 2017, Swider

2018), their position does not resemble what Hannah Arendt described as stateless-

ness; that is, a situation where a person lacks “the right to have rights”. While it is clear

that they are stripped of political rights and face discrimination, they still enjoy a number

of social, economic and cultural rights that extend beyond the scope provided in the

1954 Convention (Swider 2018). Since they have a broad scope of human rights al-

ready protected (for example, they also have a right to a non-citizen or alien’s passport)

and also some additional rights (no visa requirements for Russia nor the EU), there is

low interest to become naturalized Estonian or Latvian citizens, especially among the

older generations (Kuczyńska-Zonik 2017).

The position of the Russian speaking non-citizens of Latvia and Estonia is a very

well documented case of minority statelessness in Europe. It shows that despite being

perceived as the Other in one’s own country (Mole 2012), these non-citizen groups do

enjoy a level of protection that many stateless people around the world do not. Yet this

is only one side of the coin about minority statelessness in Europe. The other side

shows a much less clear, and nonetheless bleaker, picture of marginalized minorities

and forced migrants who are vulnerable to statelessness. Besides Roma, who have

been in Europe for centuries, there are other new cases of possible minority stateless-



14

ness emerging. Two examples are the so-called “Windrush generation” in the UK and

some Syrian refugee children born in Europe.

The “Windrush affair” showed that some marginalized and even racialized minori-

ties can be stripped of citizenship even if “according to the law” citizenship should be

granted to them. The Windrush generations refer to migrants from the Caribbean who

migrated to the UK between 1948 and 1971 as British subjects and who were granted

leave to remain (Tonkiss 2018). After WWII, the British government invited people from

its colonies to come to the UK since it lacked an adequate labour force. Due to different

factors, many of them never regularized their citizenship status in the UK, although they

had a right to do so (Sigona 2018). The leave to remain gave them a wide variety of

rights from the right to reside to the right to work as well as access to education. How-

ever, in 2010 the Home Office decided to destroy the landing cards, which were the only

solid proof that they had been granted the leave to remain. Thus, from legal citizens

they were put into a category of ‘illegal immigrants’. This particularly affected their chil-

dren, who could only prove citizenship on the basis of their parents’ passport and hence

were at risk of becoming stateless (Valdez-Symonds and Valdez-Symonds 2018).

Another conundrum connected to minority statelessness is the predicament that some

Syrian refugee children born in Europe face. Syrian nationality law is still based on gen-

der discrimination. This means that Syrian children born outside the territory of Syria

can only inherit their citizenship from their Syrian Arab fathers. They cannot acquire citi-

zenship if their father is unknown (for example, if he was killed in conflict). While gender

discrimination in nationality law has been widely discussed (Maktabi 2010, Lim 2018),

less attention has been paid to the right to a nationality of children who are not of Arab

origin, like, for example, the Kurds. The exclusionary provisions of Syrian Nationality

Law privileging Arabs have in the past rendered around 300,000 Kurds stateless. Ironi-

cally, the number of stateless Kurds has decreased in Syria, but not necessarily be-

cause of better implementation of mechanisms against statelessness. It is because the

stateless population has been displaced from Syria (Institute for Statelessness and In-

clusion 2016).

Both the Windrush generation in the UK as well as Syrian refugee children

across Europe belong to marginalized minorities. They are particularly vulnerable to

statelessness because of discrimination, war, conflict, and the legacy of colonization,

but also in many cases because of cultural racism. Racism is not only symptomatic at-

“Both the Windrush generation in the UK, as well as Syrian ref-ugee children across Europe, belong to marginalized minorities. They are particularly vulnerable to statelessness because of dis-crimination, war, conflict, and the legacy of colonization, but

also in many cases because of cultural racism”



15

tempts to deprive someone of citizenship as some examples around the globe show –

such as the Rohingya minority in Myanmar (Lewa and de Chickera 2010) and those

born to Haitian migrant parents in the Dominican Republic (Belton 2017). Racism is also

connected to the carelessness of the state to regularize the position of the most vulner-

able among its population. This was certainly the case for many Romani individuals in

the former Yugoslav space and beyond.

Stateless Roma and the Predicament of Marginalized Minorities While there are clear numbers of how many people are stateless in the Baltic states, it

is a lot less clear how many people are stateless in South East Europe, among other

places, and how many of these people belong to marginalized minorities. As the Open

Society Institute report entitled No Data – No Progress (2010) states, reliable data on

the position of Roma, including how many Roma actually live in each country, are miss-

ing. When it comes to the number of Roma, there is a great mismatch “between the re-

sults of outgroup and ingroup categorization” (Csepeli and Simon 2004: 129). However,

numerous studies have showed that Roma are both the most socio-economically de-

prived and ethnically discriminated minority in Europe. For example, the EU’s Funda-

mental Rights Agency report (2016) showed that 80 % Roma live below the country

specific poverty line in the EU.

There are very little concise numbers of how

many Roma in Europe are stateless as well as the

reasons for their statelessness. Moreover, why

they are at an increased risk of statelessness is not

as straightforward as the case of non-citizens in

the Baltic countries or even of other discriminated

minorities, such as the Rohingya in Myanmar and

the descendants of Haitian migrants in the Domini-

can Republic. There is no proof of direct targeting

of Roma. Yet as Soraya Post, one of two Romani

Members of the European Parliament (MEP)

comments, “Roma statelessness is not an acci-

dent” (Post 2018).

As I have written before on several occasions (Sardelić 2015, 2017, 2017b),

many Romani individuals who have hindered access to citizenship do not fit the ‘ideal

type’ of statelessness definition from the 1954 Convention and are often not legally rec-

ognized as stateless. However, they do suffer deprivations of human rights connected

to those of stateless persons. The reasons why Roma had, and still have, difficulties in

accessing their citizenship range from the consequences of state disintegration and war

to obstacles in bureaucratic procedures and indirectly exclusionary citizenship laws. All

“many Romani individ-uals who have hindered access to citizenship do not fit the ‘ideal type’ of statelessness…However, they do suffer depriva-tions of human rights connected to those of stateless persons”



16

these are without exception also coupled with their marginalized position and historical

discriminatory treatment they have faced.

For instance, around 25,000 Romani individuals had difficulties in regularizing

their Czech citizenship after the disintegration of the Czechoslovak Federation (Šiklova

and Miklušakova 1998, Linde 2006, Kochenov 2007). To understand why they had diffi-

culties in accessing their citizenship in the Czech part, we need to look at history. Dur-

ing WWII, many Roma who were previously living in the territory of today’s Czechia

were killed. Therefore, in Socialist Czechoslovakia most remaining Roma lived in the

Slovak part. However, the Czechoslovak authorities decided to relocate many of them

to the Czech part officially because of the factory employment available there. Unoffi-

cially, the reason for such relocation was for Roma not to be concentrated only in one

part but dispersed around the whole country (Kochenov 2007).

With the end of socialism many

factories closed down and Roma were

among the first who found themselves

unemployed and some had to resolve

to petty crime in order to survive (Ši-

klova and Miklušakova 1998). Howev-

er, this contributed to their new pre-

dicament: they could not naturalize to

become Czech citizens because they

did not have a clean criminal record or

even more often they could not meet

the residency condition as many lived in informal settlements (they were relocated by

the state, but not necessarily also registered). Although they were relocated by the

state, their official residence was never registered. The new provisions of citizenship

laws seemed neutral: however, they disproportionally affected Roma. According to Mi-

klušakova and Šiklova (1998), this was not an accident, but an intentional policy for the

Roma who were first relocated to the Czech Republic, now to be expelled back to Slo-

vakia. Many different NGO’s did advocate for the position of de facto stateless Roma

and the discriminatory provisions in law were eventually changed.

Another example, where state disintegration also plays a role, in addition to war,

in many Roma having difficulties in accessing their own citizenship was in the former

Yugoslav space. It has been established previously that both war and state disintegra-

tion can lead to statelessness. However, as I argued in my previous work (Sardelić

2015), it was not simply these two factors that led to Roma becoming legally invisible in

many parts of the former Yugoslavia (Praxis 2011). Roma were not considered as the

ultimate Other in the former Yugoslav space as they did not present a destabilizing terri-

torial threat. However, they would find themselves in-between physical and symbolic

conflict of ethnic majorities and more dominant minorities (Sigona 2012, Sardelić 2015).

“The reasons why Roma had, and still have, difficulties in accessing

their citizenship range from the consequences of state disintegra-tion and war to obstacles in bu-

reaucratic procedures and indirect-ly exclusionary citizenship laws”



17

They were not the first target of exclusionary citizenship laws, but because of their pre-

vious exclusion and forced migration they became one of the most affected populations.

Due to their marginalized position many have difficulties in regaining their citizenship to

the present day. In many instances, the problem has become intergenerational. As one

of the representatives of a human rights NGO in the region commented during his inter-

view with me, in many cases the grandparents need to be registered first in order to reg-

ister a child.

For a long time, the position of Roma with difficulties in accessing citizenship

were out of the international spotlight and they were not recognized as “real stateless”

people. It was again highlighted by a #RomaBelong project of the European Roma

Rights Centre, the European Network on Statelessness and the Institute on Stateless-

ness and Inclusion, in partnership with local human rights NGOs such as Tirana Legal

Aid Society, Your Rights in BIH, the Centre for Legal Aid and Regional Development in

Kosovo, the Macedonian Young Lawyers Association, Young Roma from Montenegro

and Praxis from Serbia (ERRC 2017). With the advocacy and efforts of these NGOs,

the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) recognized the applicant as a stateless

person (Kochovski 2017) in the case Hasani vs. the former Yugoslav Republic of Mace-

donia (Application no. 4558/17).

Roma are also faced with statelessness in countries like Italy. As a report by

Daniella Maccioni (2013) showed, they face statelessness because of spill-over effects

due to the Yugoslav wars. Many Roma ended up as forced migrants in Italy. Romani

children who were born in Italy to undocumented parents have difficulties naturalizing as

Italian citizens due to particular legal obstacles in the Italian law because of living in in-

formal settlements and hence not having legally registered residence. There are also

places like Romania, Bulgaria and Albania (ERRC 2018), where Roma have difficulties

accessing citizenship and their situation is not primarily connected to war or state disin-

tegration at all. Instead, it is due to marginalization wherein many children who are not

born in hospitals do not receive birth certificates in time to be registered as citizens of

their own countries.

Conclusion Stateless Roma live in different European countries and become stateless due to the

specific contexts of these countries. As in the case of Baltic non-citizens, Roma have

not migrated to Europe in the last couple of decades but are a traditional minority in Eu-

rope. However, their stateless position is not as well recorded as the position of Baltic

“For a long time, the position of Roma with difficulties in ac-cessing citizenship were out of the international spotlight and

they were not recognized as ‘real stateless’ people”



18

non-citizens. Although they find their own alternative way how to access the rights

(Sigona 2015, Sardelić 2017) that are taken away from them when they are deprived of

citizenship, they do not enjoy the same level of protected rights as Baltic citizens. In that

respect their position is more similar to those deprived of citizenship in the case of

Windrush Scandal and some Syrian refugee children. On the other hand, it differs from

the position of stateless in the Dominican Republic and Myanmar, where the minorities

in question were targeted directly by discriminatory laws. In the case of Roma, due to

Romaphobia (McGarry 2017), a form of anti-Roma racism, they were often perceived as

less than human. Romaphobia, coupled with longstanding marginalization, contributed

to their position as stateless people, which often resembles what Hannah Arendt de-

scribed as the “abstract nakedness of being nothing but a human” (Arendt 1968: 299-

300). The position of stateless Roma also shows that their statelessness is never a

product of absence of state interventions and law-making or, to paraphrase Soraya

Post, the Roma did not become stateless by accident (Post, 2017).

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20

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Sardelić ([email protected]). ).


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21

Statelessness in the Dominican Republic: A new turn in Anti-Haitianism

Bridget Wooding, Observatory Caribbean Migrants

The “Sentencia 168”—a ruling of the 23rd of September

2013, by the highest court of the Dominican Republic, the

Tribunal Constitucional—has been commonly represented

as a decree expelling all unauthorized Haitian residents

from the Dominican Republic and stripping citizenship

from Dominican-born Haitian descendants. However, the

evidence is that the Sentencia does not seek the territorial exclusion of Haitians and

Haitian descendants so much as their second-class inclusion into the Dominican politi-

cal economy, cementing Haitian descendants for as long as is convenient within a he-

reditary underclass. Following the Sentencia, old-style “excesses” have continued, but

there has been a newly legalistic and bureaucratically-enforced social exclusionism.

The aims are incontestably anti-Haitian. Yet what is sought is neither to expel Haitian

descendants nor to confine them visibly behind barbed wire fences, but to deter them

invisibly from accumulating the human capital, economic credentials, and citizenship

documents needed to aspire to middle class comforts and respect. These changes form

part of a larger “securitization” of civil registry records and identity documents. In sum,

this biopolitical mode of anti-Haitian exclusionism fits the neoliberal economy’s more

varied and more flexible forms of incorporation of Haitian labor.

The Context In the decades before the 1990s, unknown thousands of Dominican-born people of Hai-

tian ancestry gained official citizenship when Haitian fathers registered their children’s

births using temporary identification cards issued to seasonal sugarcane workers. Ob-

taining Dominican citizenship has always been made difficult by anti-Black racism but

was for decades facilitated by compliant civil registry officials. These local-level officials

approved the issuance of tens of thousands of valid birth certificates to the Dominican-

born children of Haitian nationals, even though the latter often bore no proof of identity

other than the “temporary” identity cards (carnets temporeros or fichas) issued to sea-

sonal workers by the sugar companies upon arrival from Haiti. Electoral politics and the

creation of small pockets of grateful voters/political clients on the sugar plantations un-

doubtedly impinged. Beginning in the 1980s, prospects for sugar’s future went from

buoyant to depressed, and official permissiveness was replaced by growing restrictive-

ness. By 1990, evidence had emerged that Dominican-born children of Haitian ancestry

were being denied birth certificates under the pretext that the Dominican Constitution,

from 1929 forward, exempted the children of persons “in transit” from the jus soli right to



22

Dominican nationality.

In 2004, Section VII, Article 10 of the Ley General de Migración (República Do-

minicana 2004: 22) made it official that anyone who is not a legal resident is, for the

purposes of the law, “in transit,” and hence that person’s Dominican-born children ex-

cludable from birthright citizenship.

It is these Dominican-born people of Haitian ancestry who for a decade have

been provisionally denied copies of their official documents when they request these at

civil registry offices. While awaiting investigation of their parents’ immigration histories,

the people thus affected are thrown into a legal limbo, their citizenship effectively re-

voked. This is by international law a form of statelessness: the relationship of belonging

that the people so affected have had since birth with the state of their birth is being an-

nulled, without consideration of whether it is possible even in principle, let alone in prac-

tice, to obtain their immigrant ancestors’ nationality.

Uncounted thousands have

been thus thrown into citizenship lim-

bo when seeking to renew their cédu-

las or obtain official replica documents

for university enrolment or foreign

travel, and their birth certificates are

indicative of being the offspring of an

undocumented immigrant. Nationality

stripping began even before the Do-

minican Constitution’s amendments, blocking citizenship for children of foreigners not

residing legally in the country, took effect in January 2010. It is now the government’s

contention that the “in transit” exclusion of the children of undocumented immigrants

from jus soli has been its official policy all along, even though that policy lacked public

legal content until 2007, the point at which the Central Electoral Board (JCE) an-

nounced, through administrative dispositions, that it could suspend any applicant’s citi-

zenship pending forensic investigation of their parents’ immigration status at the time of

birth.

The Sentence Even as the September 23rd ruling went well beyond simply confirming the validity of the

dispositions, the ruling did not explicitly foresee massive deportations. The court or-

dered three massive tasks to be carried out within a year’s time by three other sectors

of government, the Ministry of the Interior and National Police with its Migration authori-

ties, the JCE and the Dominican Congress. The court ordered the Police and Migration

authorities to compile a list of everyone living in the country that does not have a legal

residency permit. Second, it tasked the JCE to gather a list of “foreigners” (meaning the

Dominican-born children of non-legally-resident foreign nationals) whose birth certifi-

“Nationality stripping began even before the Dominican Constitu-tion’s amendments, blocking citi-zenship for children of foreigners not residing legally in the country, took effect in January 2010”



23

cates have been “irregularly” inscribed in the nation’s Civil Registry since 1929 (the year

in which the Constitution’s “in transit” exception to eligibility for jus soli citizenship be-

came effective).

A key indicator of irregular inscription is whether the child’s birth was registered

by parents bearing a legally-issued cédula or some other kind of identity document,

such as a carnet temporero. The JCE list was to be extended to include also people

who have been fraudulently “cedulized,” by being registered as the child of a Dominican

who was not in fact their mother or father, a last recourse strategy commonly used to

obtain the cédula both by Haitian nationals and Dominican-born Haitian descendants.

The Sentencia ordered that all these people be stripped of Dominican citizenship if their

birth may be traced to immigrant(s) without a legal permanent residence.

Third and lastly, the Congress was asked by the high court to devise a National

Plan of Regularization of Unauthorized Resident Foreigners, as already called for in the

General Migration Law of 2004. That plan would aim at providing a path to legal resi-

dency for both out-of-status immigrants and all those Dominican-born people who were

to be stripped of their Dominican citizenship following forensic analysis of their birth cer-

tificates by the JCE. All three pieces were envisioned to fit together in a unified le-

gal/forensic/administrative scheme.

Aftermath of the Sentence The international spotlight was once more shone on the Dominican Republic in the mid-

dle of 2015 on migrant-related issues, as the registration period for the pioneer regulari-

zation program for irregular migrants expired. The first National Survey on all Immi-

grants, carried out in 2012, estimated in that year the volume of Haitian immigrants to

be 458,233 persons. Although it did not take data on the migration status of those per-

sons surveyed, the DGM registers for early 2013 show that only 11,000 Haitians had

legal residence. The gap indicates the magnitude of those without a positive migration

status prior to the Regularization Plan. In the event, and even taking into account that

the sign-up for the plan was considerable by undocumented migrants, according to offi-

cial figures only 53.3% who registered in the Survey had managed to avail themselves

of the Plan.

The Dominican authorities faced three acute problems at this juncture. Firstly, a

very small number of persons applying for the plan managed to complete their files and

get residency status, probably because the bar was set too high in terms of criteria for

the category of migrant concerned and the time period was very tight. The preliminary

regularization (as non-residents and renewed, at the time of writing, up until mid-2018)

affords the vast majority of those thus newly documented persons little advantage be-

yond, supposedly, being exempt from deportation and timid insertion in the Social Secu-

rity system. However, some persons with this temporary documentation mistrusted the



24

authorities’ final intentions towards them and, in some cases on the eve of renewed de-

portations, went into hiding or moved to be non-traceable to the authorities.

Secondly, the presidential decree in late 2013 unleashing the Regularization Plan

had instructed the Dominican authorities to suspend deportations during the eighteen

months when the Plan was established and operated. The Herculean task of now re-

suming these and deporting as many hundreds of thousands of persons as had man-

aged to register was daunting and, in terms of logistics, a non-starter. It was against this

background that the authorities hit on the idea of encouraging so-called “spontaneous

returns” for irregular migrants who had not signed up to the Plan, before commencing

official deportations two months later.

A third conundrum was the need to face

up to local and international concerns around

the possible expatriation of some of the 133,000

Dominicans of Haitian ancestry who had been

denationalized by a Constitutional Tribunal Sen-

tence of 2013, most of whom did not have the

papers in hand to prove Dominican citizenship.

According to the International Organiza-

tion for Migration (IOM), between June 2015

and December 2016, 96, 476 families, equiva-

lent to 160,452 persons crossed the border in

these mixed flows. The bulk of the returns were

so-called “spontaneous returns” (totaling some

97, 854 events), although many of those inter-

viewed alleged that they moved because of

heightened inter-ethnic tensions in the Domini-

can Republic observed from mid-2015 onwards.

Assisted returns (initially on offer by the Dominican authorities) totaled some 462 per-

sons. Official deportations observed were 54,510 while 27,445 persons alleged that

they had been deported extra-officially. Persons who returned, despite alleging they had

signed up for the Regularization Plan, registered 11,193, most of whom moved sponta-

neously. Although the number of persons born in the Dominican Republic and deported

to Haiti was relatively low at an estimated 4.8%, two worrying trends were observed.

Most of those in this category of Haitian ancestry persons born in the Dominican Repub-

lic had moved spontaneously across the border; while of those deported in this category

the biggest group was extra-official.

The humanitarian crisis derived from this intense cross-border movement is per-

haps best exemplified by the camps established on the Haitian-Dominican border, the

Parc Cadeau complex, especially as a result of the spontaneous movers not having

necessarily anywhere to go in Haiti. Accordingly, many of these latter took root in one of

“A third conundrum was the need to face up to local and international concerns around the possible expat-

riation of some of the 133,000 Dominicans of

Haitian ancestry who had been denationalized by a Constitutional Tribunal

Sentence of 2013, most of whom did not have the papers in hand to prove Dominican citizenship”



25

the six camps set up in the vicinity of Anse-a-Pitres, on the southern Haitian-Dominican

border. By the middle of January 2016 the total population was 2,203, mainly young

people under the age of 19 (58.3%) with a high percentage of persons claiming to have

been born in the Dominican Republic (45.7%).

Naturalization Law 169-14 Although these ignominious camps have been largely dismantled, the fact remains that,

according to official Dominican figures (2018), only some 20,000 persons denational-

ized by the Sentence have managed to re-possess some documentation. Hence the

potential for cross-border erroneous expatriations continues. For the route towards resti-

tution of nationality for those persons denationalized by the Sentence has been tortu-

ous, as signposted below.

The Dominican Congress approved, in May 2014, Law 169-14, establishing a special

protocol to affirm the Dominican citizenship of all those who have been granted official

identity documents prior to 2007 on the basis of the registration of their birth on Domini-

can soil (República Dominicana, Congreso Nacional 2014). For those Dominican-born

people of foreign ancestry whose names do not appear in the Civil Registry, the law

also provides a path to legal residency and then citizenship, two years later. There is

much that is surprisingly liberal in Law 169-14, even as it affirms a basic exclusionary

principle, established in a 2009 amendment to the Dominican Constitution, that the Do-

minican-born children of unauthorized immigrants will henceforth be denied birthright

citizenship. Concerning Haitian descendants’ right to jus soli nationality—the matter ef-

fectively dealt with by Law 169-14—observers on both the xenophobic right and the lib-

eral left had understood the constitutional court’s Sentencia 168/13 to be clear in con-

firming that citizenship would be retroactively taken from the offspring of unauthorized

immigrants.

Law 169-14 provides measures that run contrary to that aim, reasoning in its

preamble that even people improperly registered were at no fault if others committed

the “error” of registering them at birth as Dominicans. The Law’s preamble also cites the

interest of the state in protecting a range of individual rights, including equality, human

development, and nationality, as a rationale for setting down procedures for granting

Dominican nationality to the Dominican-born. That this concession is characterized as

exceptional, with a 2007 end date attached to eligibility, both set important boundaries

that permitted the Law’s authors to juggle at least three political desiderata: first, re-

“observers on both the xenophobic right and the liberal left had understood the constitutional court’s Sentencia 168/13 to be clear in confirming that citizenship would be retroactively taken from

the offspring of unauthorized immigrants”



26

maining true to the letter of the Sentencia 168/13; second, mitigating the Sentencia’s

massive potential for social disruption and legal conflict; while, third, drawing a bright

line in time past by which no further children of Haitians without legal right of residence

will be accepted into the Dominican nation.

As noted, Law 169-14 conceptualizes people born in-country to irregularly-

resident foreign parents not as Dominicans but as foreign nationals. The Law divides

these people into two groups. The first, Group A, are those who possessed official Do-

minican identity documents. They would be granted Dominican nationality, effectively

because the state recognized a responsibility toward them for having committed the

administrative error of registering them, and not because they are Dominicans by right

of being born on Dominican soil. The second group, Group B comprises those who lack

any kind of identity document. These people the Law classifies as foreigners in their

own country of birth and obligates to follow a naturalization process in order to obtain

Dominican citizenship, which many had previously assumed to be theirs all along.

The Law immediately burdened rights liberals in Dominican civil society with a

difficult choice: cooperate, by helping the Dominicans who stood at risk of becoming

stateless persons to present solid legal claims to citizenship; or keep the moral high

ground by repudiating the whole process as blatantly anti-Haitian. Civil society organiza-

tions saw a valuable opportunity within the Law 169 for reducing the vulnerability of

those people in Group B, who had no identity documents and hence were particularly at

risk of statelessness. For these human rights defenders, the Law’s silver lining was that

it gave visibility to the plight of those tens of thousands of Dominican-born Haitian de-

scendants whose birth had never been registered. Nevertheless, among both groups

actual outcomes have been mixed, with human rights defenders pointing to inadequa-

cies of the Law (especially for Group B) and the timid uneven application for Group A.

What the future holds Lastly, it could be argued that what is happening in the Dominican Republic is akin to

the troubled distinction between Us and Them, Migrant and Citizen which migration and

citizenship scholar Bridget Anderson theorizes in her acclaimed text Us and Them? The

Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls (OUP, 2013). Her work explores how bor-

ders create social, political and economic relations and argues that these are not solely

the concern of migrants. The exclusion of migrants helps define the privileges and limi-

tations of citizenship, and close attention to the border (physical and metaphorical) re-

veals as much about how we make sense of ourselves. Her book explores how the mi-

grant is a normative as well as a legal construct which is deeply problematic for techno-

cratic policies. Immigration status is not only about legal technicalities, but it is about the

status in the sense of value, worth and honour, that is membership of, as she puts it, “a

community of value”. Thus Us and Them draws attention to the fact that the struggle for

justice, inclusion and human rights cannot be won – or not exclusively – in the legal



27

sphere. This insight is one which affected persons and their advocates should take to

heart in the Dominican Republic with a view to garnering a broader church of support for

the cause of denationalized persons of Haitian ancestry in the Dominican Republic in

order to better avail themselves of the small openings for policy dialogue which persist

in country and turn these effectively to their advantage.

Please direct inquiries about “Statelessness in the Dominican Republic” to Bridget Wooding ([email protected]).




28

From citizen to stateless – the lost rights: Examples from Bahrain Zeineb Alsabeehg, University of Oslo

Introduction Increasingly more states in the world legalise or practice denatu-

ralisation of citizens. Many have a restriction against citizens be-

coming stateless—allowing the deprivation of citizenship of only

dual citizens. However, other states do not have any constraints on who may be de-

prived of their citizenship. In this way, citizenship revocations result in people becoming

stateless when they do not possess any other citizenship than the one revoked. This

includes those who obtained citizenship by naturalisation, but also native citizens of a

state. They find themselves transferred from the position of citizens to stateless.

Citizenship includes a set of rights. Those who lose their citizenship thus lose the

associated rights that are exclusive for citizens. This article will examine the lost rights

as a result of citizenship revocations. The topic will be illus-

trated by examples from Bahrain. Although it is one of the

tiniest countries in the Middle East, Bahrain has one of the

highest numbers of citizenship revocations per capita in the

region. More than 730 individuals have had their citizenship

revoked since 2012 in a country of less than 1.5 million inhab-

itants, where less than half hold Bahraini citizenship and the

rest are immigrants.1 The most extensive incident of citizen-

ship revocation occurred on May 15, 2018, when the fourth

High Criminal Court in Manama revoked the citizenship of

115 individuals—all men—in a single case. They were ac-

cused of forming and running a terrorist group called “Zulfiqar

Brigades” (Bahrain News Agency 2018). Most of those who

have been stripped of their Bahraini citizenship do not have

any other nationality. Thus, they end up stateless.

Bahrain has amended its legislation during the last six years in order to extend

the authorities’ power to denaturalise citizens. Today, citizenship can be revoked by the

King, through a legal process by the Courts or by an administrative decision by the Min-

istry of Interior. Prior to 2014, this power was legally restricted to only the two first men-

tioned authorities. Bahraini law states that citizenship can be revoked “in case of trea-

1 Most immigrants are migrant workers from South Asia. Indians form the largest expatriate group, while a considerable amount also comes from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippines and other Arab countries.

“Although it is one of the tiniest

countries in the Middle East,

Bahrain has one of the highest

numbers of citi-zenship revoca-tions per capita

in the region”



29

son” (ref. the Constitution of Bahrain) and for “damaging the security of the state” (ref.

the Citizenship Act).

Since 2013, the authorities have also extended the power to strip people of their

citizenship based on terrorism-related charges. However, the anti-terrorism legislation

has been internationally criticised for having a vague definition of terrorism that enables

the government to criminalise activities of freedom of expression, assembly and associ-

ation (McChrystal 2016). Due process is lacking and torture is widely used to extract

confessions from the defendants, as have been documented in the case of the so-called

“Zulfiqar Brigades” where 115 individuals had their citizenship revoked (Amnesty Inter-

national 2018).

Two main groups of people have had their citizenship revoked by Bahraini au-

thorities: Individuals affiliated with ISIS and dissidents from the Shia population in Bah-

rain. The overwhelming majority belong to the latter group. The increasing use of citi-

zenship revocations during the last few years in Bahrain is associated with the govern-

mental suppression of protestors following the Arab uprising that erupted in the country

in 2011 (Alsabeehg 2018). Human rights groups have criticised the practice for being a

tool by the Bahraini government “to crush all forms of opposition, dissent and activism”

(Amnesty International 2018).

The lost rights

What are the rights that citizens enjoy, which can no longer be enjoyed by those who

have had their citizenship revoked? I discuss this question based on examples from the

Bahraini case of citizenship revocations. Three main rights are highlighted. These are

(1) the right of residence, (2) the right of employment and (3) the right of transferring

citizenship to children. In the examination, (4) the right to movement and travel, (5) the

right to state-subsidised social benefits and (6) the right to health care are also men-

tioned. This article illustrates the significant impact citizenship revocations have on peo-

ple’s lives. The transition from the position of a citizen to a stateless person changes an

individual’s life dramatically. It also affects the family of the individual whose citizenship

has been revoked, as discussed in the last section of this article.

The Courts in Bahrain have issued the majority of citizenship revocations. The defend-

ants are usually sentenced to imprisonment in addition to having their citizenship re-

voked. For instance, in the case of 115 defendants who had their citizenship revoked on

May 15, 2018, almost half (53 persons) were sentenced to life in prison, while the rest

received sentences ranging from 15 to 3 years in prison. Therefore, for most of those

who have been stripped of their citizenship, they have not experienced life outside the

“The transition from the position of a citizen to a stateless person changes an individual’s life dramatically”



30

prison walls as stateless individuals (and those sentenced to life in prison will probably

never do).

Consequently, the examination below is based mainly on the conditions reported

by those who have been stripped of their citizenship by the King and the Ministry of Inte-

rior and who are not imprisoned. However, many of those who have been stripped of

their citizenship by these two authorities were imprisoned earlier during the 2011 upris-

ing in Bahrain. These are dissidents from the Shia Muslim community. The ISIS affili-

ates who have been stripped of their citizenship were largely already abroad and

fighting for ISIS in Iraq or Syria when they had their citizenship revoked by the Ministry

of Interior.

Therefore, those who have felt the consequences of losing Bahraini citizenship

the most are dissidents from the Shia population, including those who have fled the

country. For instance, there are several political refugees in the United Kingdom (UK)

who have had their Bahraini citizenship revoked. One of them is the founder of a UK-

based human rights organisation that exposes human rights violations in Bahrain. He

himself left Bahrain fleeing torture after having been imprisoned (Alwadaei 2017). In

what follows I discuss some of the consequences that people face as a result of having

their citizenship revoked.

Right of residence

Citizens are entitled to reside in the country where they have their citizenship. They can

travel to and from it without restrictions. If their country is a member of a union or a co-

operation that has an agreement of freedom of movement between the member states,

the citizens are also entitled to the same right of abode in the other member states.

Bahrain is part of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which constitutes five other

countries: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. Cit-

izens have the right to freely travel and reside in the other GCC countries.2

A consequence of citizenship revocation is that those affected lose their right of

residence in their country and the freedom of movement in any cooperating countries.

Bahrainis who have had their citizenship revoked had to hand in their identification doc-

uments such as passports and other ID cards. From the moment a citizen turns into a

non-citizen, he is looked upon as a foreigner by the state. He has to apply for a residen-

cy permit and is considered an “illegal resident” until he manages to get a residency

2 However, since June 2017, Qatar has been blockaded by Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain. They accuse Qatar of intervening in their domestic affairs. Citizens from these three countries risk punishment if they travel to or stay in Qatar (Begum 2017).

“those who have felt the consequences of losing Bahraini citizen-ship the most are dissidents from the Shia population”



31

permit (Amnesty International 2018). However, getting a residency permit is often diffi-

cult as the individual is left with almost no documents to identify himself in the applica-

tion process. Moreover, the citizenship revocation is a tool by the authorities to deem

people unwelcome as members of the state. Therefore, the authorities have not been

willing to grant these people a permission to keep residing in the country, even when

they were able to provide a sponsor as is required for the application (Bahrain Mirror

2016).

A further result of citizenship revocation

is therefore deportation from the country and

displacement. People born and raised in Bah-

rain find themselves forced to leave their home

country following a deportation order from the

authorities after having their citizenship confis-

cated. Eight individuals were deported from

Bahrain in January and February 2018 after an

appeal’s court upheld the decision by the Minis-

try of Interior, which revoked their citizenship

back in November 2012. They were deported to

Iraq (Human Rights Watch 2018). Dozens of

deportations of other stateless individuals took place in 2016 and 2017. Bahraini author-

ities grant these people passports with only a one-year validation and deport them to

countries where Bahrainis can enter without a visa or where they can obtain visa on

arrival. In the passport it is falsely stated that the individual is a Bahraini resident (Bah-

rain Mirror 2016).

Dr. Masoud Jahromi, an engineering professor with Shia Muslim background, is

one of the individuals who have experienced this. His citizenship was revoked in 2015

by the Ministry of Interior. He was given three destination options when they were to

banish him in 2016: Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey (ibid). As these countries already have a

large immigrant and stateless population, such as Palestinians in Lebanon, deported

Bahrainis are put in a critical position where they have to make a living as stateless in a

new country that already faces challenges regarding immigrants. Human rights groups

have criticised Bahraini authorities for this practice. “Turning citizens into stateless peo-

ple and banishing them by forcing them to leave the country is a violation of internation-

al law,” as Amnesty International (2018) comments.

“Bahraini authorities grant these people passports

with only a one-year vali-dation and deport them to countries where Bahrainis can enter without a visa or where they can obtain visa

on arrival”



32

Furthermore, as those who have had their citizenship revoked are regarded as

unwelcome by the state, they are often not allowed to travel back to Bahrain. In this

way, those who are deported have no prospective of returning. They are forcibly sepa-

rated from their families and friends in Bahrain. Some of those who have had their citi-

zenship revoked were already abroad, either they had fled Bahrain in advance or were

on travel, when the decision of revocation was announced. This includes brothers Ja-

wad and Jalal Fairooz, two former parliamentarians from the opposition political associ-

ation Al-Wefaq. They were on travel in the UK in November 2012 when the Ministry of

Interior announced in the state news agency that their citizenship was revoked. They—

along with 29 others—had allegedly “damaged the security of the state” with reference

to the Citizenship Act. There was no further explanation of what each of them have

done that required the deprivation of their citizenship. The brothers do not have the right

to enter Bahrain again and are instead exiled in the UK (Raymond 2013). Human Rights

Watch (2018) comments on this practice as follows:

“Article 12 of the [Universal Declaration of Human Rights] states that, “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.” In 1999, the Human Rights Committee, which interprets the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Bahrain has signed, stated that “The scope of ‘his own country’ is broader than the concept ‘country of his nationality,’” and that it would apply to people who have been stripped of their nationality in violation of international law.”

Thus, those who have had their citizenship revoked are deprived of the right of residen-

cy in their own homeland. They cannot keep their national identification documents, but

instead they have to hand them in to the Immigration Office. They are looked upon as

foreigners and are often summoned for “illegal residency.” The result has been expul-

sion from their country of origin with no right of return. They have to start a new life in a

new country, often as stateless—as most of them do not have any other nationality—

and without their families and friends who are residing in Bahrain. Those who continue

to live in Bahrain under the status of “illegal residents” have to live with the fear of being

forcibly deported from the country at any time.

“Some of those who have had their citizenship revoked were already abroad, either they had fled Bahrain in advance or were on travel,

when the decision of revocation was announced”



33

Right of employment

A person who has lost his citizenship faces challenges in making a living in Bahrain as

long as he lives there. Non-citizens do not have the same access to the job market as

citizens, and as an “illegal immigrant” an individual is prohibited from working. Turning

from a citizen into a non-citizen—or worse, into a stateless person—leads to a loss of

privileges to employment. The perception of this individual as a foreigner entails that he

has to ask the authorities for permission to work. He needs a job licence. In order to get

a job licence in Bahrain, someone has to sponsor you (Bahrain Center for Human

Rights 2014). A sponsor has to be eligible and willing to take such responsibility for a

person who the state has deemed unwanted. Nevertheless, as the person whose citi-

zenship is confiscated is left without identification documents, it is practically impossible

to apply for a job license.

Those who lose their citizenship are often met with a subsequent loss of work-

place. They do not have a valid permit to continue working and are therefore in many

cases fired or suspended by their employers. This was the case for Dr. Masoud Jahromi

after his citizenship was revoked in 2015. He was suspended from the university where

he worked as chairman of the department of telecom. According to Jahromi, the univer-

sity’s president did not want to dismiss him initially,

but was forced by the authorities as he was threated

that “measures will be taken against the university” if

Jahromi was not dismissed (Bahrain Mirror 2016). So,

the Bahraini government is stripping people of their

citizenship and deliberately working to cut their liveli-

hood in the country.

Without a job, those who have had their citi-

zenship revoked are not able to keep a sufficient in-

come level. As non-citizens, they are not entitled to

state-subsidised social benefits. In this way, they have

to depend on any savings they may have, in addition to support from family members,

friends and their social network. However, if they have savings in their banks, they are

not always able to take the money out and use it. This is due to the fact that many of

those who have had their citizenship revoked have found their bank accounts closed

following the citizenship revocation (McChrystal 2016). With all these obstacles, those

affected often find themselves economically disabled. They have been deprived of their

economic rights and are forced to depend on others’ help and support.

“many of those who have had their citizen-

ship revoked have found their bank ac-

counts closed follow-ing the citizenship

revocation”



34

Right of transferring citizenship to children

Citizens have the right to transfer their citizenship to their children. This is the right of

citizenship by descent. However, in Bahrain, this applies to only male citizens. Bahraini

citizenship is transferred by descent only through the father. Individuals are not eligible

for citizenship by birth, as is the practice in some countries such as the United States. A

child could have been born in the country and have a Bahraini mother, but as long as

the child’s father is not a Bahraini citizen, the child is not eligible for citizenship in Bah-

rain.3

As almost all of those who have had their citizenship revoked in Bahrain are men,

this entails that they lose the right to transfer their Bahraini citizenship to their new-

borns—a right that they once enjoyed. This often results in the fact that their children

are born into statelessness. Bahrainis who have had their citizenship revoked in exile

are also affected. If the country they live in does not grant citizenship to children by

birth, their children are born stateless. This has been the case for those exiled in the UK

who have no other citizenship than the Bahraini they once had (Alwadaei 2017).

In this way, citizenship revocation not only affects the one whose citizenship is revoked,

but also his family. If the denaturalised person has children, he has to expect the same

living conditions for his children as he experiences as a result of the citizenship revoca-

tion. This includes lack of identification documents. For example, parents have reported

difficulties with even obtaining birth certificates for their children in Bahrain. Further-

more, these children are not eligible to receive free health services as citizens are. This

has led to children not receiving the ordinary vaccinations provided to other children at

the same age (Bahrain Center for Human Rights 2017). Stateless individuals do not

have free access to public health and may also not afford private health care due to

their economic situation.

It is also possible to obtain Bahraini citizenship by naturalisation. For this, there

are some residency and language recruitments. There has nevertheless been a sys-

tematic discrimination in the naturalisation policy of the Bahraini government. The au-

thorities have showed favour to people coming from Sunni-majority countries such as

Pakistan and Yemen, whereas stateless groups with Shia Muslim background who have

lived in Bahrain for a long time are often not provided citizenship (NGOs 2015). It is

3 Bahraini women can transfer citizenship to their children only when “the father is unknown or fatherhood is not substantiated,” according to the Citizenship Act. There is no safeguard for children whose father is stateless.

“If the country they live in does not grant citizenship to children by birth, their children are born stateless… In this way, citizenship revocation not only affects the one whose citizenship is revoked,

but also his family”



35

therefore unlikely that the government provides citizenship to children whose fathers are

perceived as a threat to national security and who have been deprived of their citizen-

ship.

Thus, a person who has lost his Bahraini citizenship loses it also for his children

who are born after his citizenship was revoked. Consequently, all the rights that he is

deprived of, his children are also deprived of. In this way, citizenship revocations result

in statelessness not only on an individual level, but also familial level.

Conclusion

Bahrain is an example of a country that denaturalise with no regard to that it may lead to

statelessness for the affected individuals and their children. The authorities have in-

stead expanded the legal frame to revoke citizenship of people and have increasingly

deprived individuals of their citizenship since 2012. Opposition members, human rights

activists and other dissidents have had their citizenship revoked. The increase is there-

fore largely seen in connection with the popular uprising that erupted in 2011 and the

authorities’ attempt to crush it.

People who are transferred from the position of citizens to stateless lose the

basic rights of residence in their own homeland, of employment and of transferring citi-

zenship to their own children. They also lose the right to movement and travel, to re-

ceive state-subsidised social benefits and to access free health care. These are the

rights that were highlighted in this article, and there are certainly more that could be

added. In sum, the examples from the Bahraini case of citizenship revocations reflect

the significant decrease of rights that face denaturalised individuals along with their fam-

ilies.

References

Alsabeehg, Zeineb. 2018. “Bahrain’s Citizenship Policy of Inclusion and Exclusion.” In Nils A.

Butenschøn and Roel Meijer (eds.). The Middle East in Transition – The Centrality of Citizenship.

Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Alwadaei, Sayed. 2017. “My daughter will be born stateless – in the UK.” The Guardian. Ac

cessed July 8, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/24/daughter-

stateless-uk-bahrain-torture-human-rights

Amnesty International. 2018. “Bahrain: Citizenship of 115 people revoked in ‘ludicrous’ mass

trial.” Accessed June 14, 2018. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/05/bahrain-

citizenship-of-115-people-revoked-in-ludicrous-mass-trial/

Bahrain Center for Human Rights. 2014. “Statelessness in Bahrain.” Accessed June 22, 2018.

http://bahrainrights.org/sites/default/files/Stateless%20in%20Bahrain%20-%20Final.pdf

Bahrain Center for Human Rights. 2017. “Bahrain: Children without Citizenship.” Accessed


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/24/daughter-stateless-uk-bahrain-torture-human-rights

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/24/daughter-stateless-uk-bahrain-torture-human-rights

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/05/bahrain-citizenship-of-115-people-revoked-in-ludicrous-mass-trial/

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/05/bahrain-citizenship-of-115-people-revoked-in-ludicrous-mass-trial/

http://bahrainrights.org/sites/default/files/Stateless%20in%20Bahrain%20-%20Final.pdf


36

June 22, 2018.

http://bahrainrights.org/sites/default/files/NEW%20BCHR%20Children%20Without%20Citizen

ship%20-%20March%202017.pdf

Bahrain Mirror. 2016. “Dr. Masoud Jahromi in Interview with Bahrain Mirror: I Waved Goodbye

to the One Who Deported Me.” Accessed June 13, 2018.

http://bahrainmirror.com/en/news/30834.html

Bahrain News Agency. 2018. “Court jails 115 on terror charges.” Accessed July 8, 2018.

http://www.bna.bh/portal/en/news/841302

Begum, Rothna. 2017. “Gulf Crisis Shows How Discrimination in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE,

and Qatar Tears Families Apart.” Human Rights Watch. Accessed June 22, 2018.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/21/gulf-crisis-shows-how-discrimination-saudi-arabia-

bahrain-uae-and-qatar-tears

Human Rights Watch. 2018. “Bahrain: New Deportations of Nationals.” Accessed June 14,

2018. https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/04/bahrain-new-deportations-nationals

McChrystal, Ryan. 2016. “Bahrain: critics and dissidents still face twin threat of statelessness

and deportation.” Index on Censorship. Accessed June 22, 2018.

https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/04/bahrain-critics-dissidents-still-face-twin-threats-

statelessness-deportation/

NGOs (Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB), Bahrain Institute for

Rights and Democracy (BIRD), and Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR)). 2015. “Apart in

their Own Land.” Accessed June 22, 2018. http://www.adhrb.org/wp-

content/uploads/2015/09/ADHRB_ApartLand_Vol2_Web.pdf

Raymond, Paul Adrian. 2013. “An Interview with Two Exiled Dissident Bahraini MPs.” Ac

cessed July 8, 2013. https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/av4gyj/an-interview-with-two-exiled-

bahraini

Please direct inquiries about “From citizen to stateless” to Zeineb Alsabeehg ([email protected]).

).


http://bahrainrights.org/sites/default/files/NEW%20BCHR%20Children%20Without%20Citizenship%20-%20March%202017.pdf

http://bahrainrights.org/sites/default/files/NEW%20BCHR%20Children%20Without%20Citizenship%20-%20March%202017.pdf

http://bahrainmirror.com/en/news/30834.html

http://www.bna.bh/portal/en/news/841302

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/21/gulf-crisis-shows-how-discrimination-saudi-arabia-bahrain-uae-and-qatar-tears

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/21/gulf-crisis-shows-how-discrimination-saudi-arabia-bahrain-uae-and-qatar-tears

https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/04/bahrain-new-deportations-nationals

https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/04/bahrain-critics-dissidents-still-face-twin-threats-statelessness-deportation/

https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/04/bahrain-critics-dissidents-still-face-twin-threats-statelessness-deportation/

http://www.adhrb.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ADHRB_ApartLand_Vol2_Web.pdf

http://www.adhrb.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ADHRB_ApartLand_Vol2_Web.pdf

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/av4gyj/an-interview-with-two-exiled-bahraini

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/av4gyj/an-interview-with-two-exiled-bahraini




37

Statelessness and the struggle to close the gap in human rights through legal empowerment: The Palermo Convention employed as a conduit

Tanya Faye Herring, Bangor University Law School Doc-

toral Researcher, Wales, UK; Research Fellow, International Communities Organization (ICO), London,

UK; Post-doctoral Researcher, The Wales Observatory on Human Rights of Children and Young People

This article focuses on the legal empowerment of the stateless. The first part addresses

the concept of legal empowerment and, through the case of the Lumad, explains how

the law can be used to close the gap in human rights fulfillment for the stateless and

other vulnerable populations. It then describes how the universal application of the Pa-

lermo Convention can become a prevention and protection resource for stateless popu-

lations, concluding that there must be precise and determined implementation of inter-

national law into the domestic sphere to close the gaps between human rights and the

rule of law.

Legal Empowerment Global legal empowerment has been described by Resolution 63/142 of the General

Assembly’s final report of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor as the

process whereby the poor are protected and enabled to use the law to effect systematic

change, especially in the realms of economic growth and sustainable development. One

of the greatest global human rights challenges to legal empowerment is poverty. How-

ever, poverty remains the nucleus of discrimination, insecurity, and social exclusion.

Middlesex University’s Professor Blitz, who is a leading expert on statelessness, was

commissioned to conduct one of the first economic studies that quantified the cost un-

dertaken by a stateless person. The 2011 report investigated 980 stateless and former

stateless from key regions in Bangladesh, Kenya, Slovenia, and Sri Lanka. The re-

search outcomes indicated that a stateless person’s household income is 34% lower

than a person who is not stateless. A substantial difference was found in home owner-

ship where a stateless person is 60% less likely to own a home than those who are non-

stateless. Consequently, using 2017-2018 economies, poverty continues to have an

adverse impact on the stateless and their access to education and healthcare.

“poverty continues to have an adverse impact on the stateless and their access to education and healthcare”



38

A situational-case with the Lumad serves as an exemplar. The Lumad are a

group of indigenous people that consists of 18 ethnolinguistic groups in the southern

regions of the Philippines. The name, Lumad, is an abbreviation for Katawhang Lumad

(literally “indigenous peoples”). Similar to many indigenous groups, the people are poor,

disadvantaged and marginalized. Historically, the Lumad have a complex history in the

Philippines with roots that extend to the 11th century. Oona Paredes’ work, entitled ‘A

Mountain of Difference’, describes the regional oral traditions that may have possibly

reconceptualized the political and cultural history of the islands. The author portrays

Spanish archival sources providing a Catholic influence in Lumad customs. Despite po-

litical and cultural origins, the portrait of a marginalized indigenous group prevails. The

circumstances of the Lumad mirror many other Southeast Asian groups and those

across the globe in that they historically have struggled to maintain their rights to a na-

tionality and self-determination. Contrary to two crucial covenants adopted in 1966– the

International Covenant on Economic, Social

and Cultural Rights and the International

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,

which enshrined in the same terms the right

of people to self-determination, indigenous

people lack the freedom to choose their own

social and cultural systems, among other

contentious issues that revolve around edu-

cation and native lands.

Furthermore, the Lumad battle state-

lessness. Mr. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, the

United Nations Special Rapporteur on the

situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, presented at

the permanent forum on indigenous issues in May 2007, at New York. The report out-

lined many of the foundational issues faced by the Lumad and other indigenous groups

in the Southeast Asian region, to include civil war, unrest with governments over com-

munal lands, and human rights violations. Mr. Stavenhagen cites the lack of citizen

rights as a long-standing basis of human rights violations against the Lumad in the Phil-

ippines, as well as other indigenous groups in the region, and called for an international

response to address the ongoing issues. For example, women still face problems, and

exploitation for the purposes of international marriages continues despite the Philip-

pines’ Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003 (CEDAW/C/PHI/Q/6 2006: 19). The

Lumad women seeking a way out of poverty find themselves victims of trafficking as

they are prostituted by their own husbands. Equally as critical, the women’s children are

decreed ‘stateless’ by virtue of the laws of certain countries. Again, in many instances,

women find themselves and their children victims regardless of the Philippines enacting

“The circumstances of the Lumad mirror many other Southeast Asian groups and those across the globe in that they historically have strug-gled to maintain their rights to a nationality and self-determination”



39

the Anti-Mail-Order Bride Law in 1990 (RA 6955), which prohibits entities from facilitat-

ing and organizing marriages.

The situation of the Lumad mirrors that of the Rohingya. Both groups have centu-

ries of heritage in Southeast Asia and both face issues surrounding native lands, cultur-

al systems, and economic conditions. The difference is that the Lumad’s situation is not

a highly publicized crisis, although they have been subjected to violence on a similar

scale to the Rohingyas. A glimpse of the violence directed toward the Lumad is outlined

in the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor’s 2015

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in the Philippines.4 The report is just one of

a sundry that encapsulates the long-standing forms of discrimination, among other hu-

man rights violations, that the Lumad have encountered.

Unlike the plight of the Rohingya, there are legal empowerment successes that

are absent from other similarly-situated indigenous groups, which sets the Lumad apart.

The Lumad communal land is well-known for its rich minerals of gold, nickel, and cop-

per. These highly valued minerals

are under constant encroachment

by politically influential mining

companies. The 1997 Indigenous

Peoples’ Rights Act was construct-

ed to protect and secure rights to

ancestral lands. Yet the Lumads

are subjected to mounting pressure

and violence from wealthy multinational corporations, logging and mining companies,

and other companies with economic interest, that have influence with the military, gov-

ernment, and even some tribal leaders. For many years, these clashes have left thou-

sands of Lumads displaced, violated and harmed after corporate plunder and militariza-

tion that includes wealthy Filipinos, who seized land for planting and exporting palm oil,

rubber, pineapples, and bananas.

In one instance, the Lumad faced removal from multiple sections of their ances-

tral land. The Lumand (under the name the Moro National Liberation Front [MNLF],

which later splintered into the group Moro Islamic Liberation Front [MILF]), was formed

in 1969 to resist heightening discrimination and marginalization. The group, along with

other indigenous people, had been engaged in armed conflict with the Government of

the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) since 1972. The conflict has reportedly killed tens

of thousands of people and displaced over 3 million.

On 24 March 2001, at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, an Agreement on the General

Framework for the Resumption of Peace between the GRP and the MILF occurred. The

agreement extended safety and security guarantees to MILF members, who were di-

4 US State Department, ‘2015 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Philippines’ available at https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2015/eap/252793.htm.

“Unlike the plight of the Rohingya, there are legal empowerment suc-cesses that are absent from other

similarly-situated indigenous groups, which sets the Lumad apart”


https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2015/eap/252793.htm


40

rectly and principally involved in the GRP-MILF Peace talks. Through a document enti-

tled, ‘Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain’ (MOA-AD), more commonly

known as the GRP-MILF Tripoli Agreement on Peace (2001), a framework was prof-

fered that intended to structure redress, resolve, and rectify a multitude of injustices that

resulted from discrimination of indigenous groups. However, there was substantial dis-

agreement on substantive facets of the MOA-AD, which included consensus contribu-

tions by all impacted indigenous stakeholders, as well discussion about the true intent of

the document and its contents.

Dissatisfied with the MOA-AD, the Lumads exercised an atypical and

unprecedented legal empowerment action as an indigenous group. The Lumad, who

are characterized as uneducated and without political power, were able to abort the

signing of the MOA-AD. On 4 August, 2008, just one day before the scheduled signing

ceremonies planned at Putrajaya, Malaysia, the Lumads were successful in obtaining a

Supreme Court restraining order. As a result, many international community

ambassadors from Japan, the United States, Australia, and others were unable to fulfill

what had been hailed as a monumental step forward in indigenous relations.

In yet another instance, the Lumad faced modernization projects, such as the

hydroelectric project in Mount Apo. The mountain and volcano is one of the highest in

the Philippines and one of the country’s most popular destinations for climbing. This

project, like so many others, threatened to displace the Lumads from their homelands.

With support from the Coalition for Indigenous People’s Rights and Ancestral Domains,

more commonly referred to as the CIPRAD, and other advocates, Senate Bill 1728 was

formulated. Sponsored by Juan Flavier, Senate Bill 1728 evolved, after much legal

wrangling, to Republic Act No. 8371, Indigenous People’s Rights Act of 1997. Act

8371’s aim is to, “Recognize, Protect and Promote the Rights of Indigenous Cultural

Communities/Indigenous Peoples (ICCs/IPS).

Moreover, Act 8371 fulfills the four-pillars of legal epowerment outlined in the UN

2009 Assembly Report: 1) Access to justice and the “rule of law,” and the three-pillars

that are essential to crucial livelihood rights, 2) property rights, 3) essential elements of

labor rights, and 4) business rights. According to Act 8371, it provides, “a more

comprehensive law… to stop prejudice against indigenous people through recognition

of certain rights over their ancestral lands, and to live in accordance recognize and

protect the rights of the indigenous people not only to their ancestral domain but to

social justice and human rights, self-determination and empowerment, and their cultural

“legal practitioners, advocates, and concerned parties can make a difference in the lives of the stateless and the poor and, more importantly, how the stateless can use the justice system to

achieve their own objectives”



41

integrity.” Both of these instances of legal empowerment are indicators of how legal

practitioners, advocates, and concerned parties can make a difference in the lives of the

stateless and the poor and, more importantly, how the stateless can use the justice

system to achieve their own objectives.

The Palermo Convention In order to address the gap between human rights fulfillment and the rule of law,

especially as it pertains to the stateless, it is also necessary to examine the international

legal sphere. This article’s focus on the Southeast Asian geographic region opens a

discourse on prevention measures and protection mechanisms against multiple forms of

exploitation in international law. Universal protections for many of the critical exploita-

tions faced by the stateless, specifically in countries that have not ratified the 1951 Con-

vention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status

of Stateless Persons, the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, and the

1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees 31, are seldom discussed in relation

to the stateless. I contend that this lack of analysis has caused scholars, policymakers

and others who work on statelessness to overlook a crucial treaty, the provisions of

which could assist in creating an environment of global legal empowerment for the

stateless.

Specifically, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized

Crime (the “Palermo” Convention), which was adopted by General Assembly resolution

55/25 of 15 November, 2000, contains several provisions that could benefit the

stateless, if implemented in the domestic sphere. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime

states that the Convention “is the main international instrument in the fight against

transnational organized crime.” It is supplemented by three Protocols, which target

specific areas and manifestations of organized crime: the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress

and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children; the Protocol

against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea, and Air, and the third protocol,

Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing and Trafficking in Firearms, which is not

included in this analysis.

While neither the Convention nor its protocols are specific to the issue of

statelessness, in this socio-legal research article, I opine that Member States’ national

integration, administration and enforcement of the Palermo Convention, and its

Protocols could result in the following:

a) Article 1 of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons,

especially Women and Children (also referred to as the Trafficking Protocol)

“the “Palermo” Convention…contains several provisions that could benefit the stateless, if implemented in the domestic sphere”



42

supplements the Convention and it ‘shall’ be interpreted together with the Convention,

with a transnational requirement. Whereas, ‘shall’ denotes the mandatory obligation, it

envelopes a stronger prevention and protection obligation than a singular presented

human rights legal framework; whereas, the UN definition of legal empowerment

published in the 2014(19) edition of the Tilburg Law Review is obtained: ‘… the poor are

protected and enabled to use the law to advance their rights and their interests as

citizens and economic actors’

b) The study proffers the Palermo Convention and its supplemental Protocols as a con-

duit for vulnerable populations, such as the Lumad, the Rohingya, and similarly-situated

populations. The Convention and its supplemental Protocols allow populations to

achieve the UN’s concepts of global legal empowerment, defined earlier in this article.

For example, several elements of the Convention and its supplementing Protocols

support these populations in removing barriers to their citizenry by accessing resources

that are both community-driven and rights-based, including:

1) Article 5 of the Trafficking Protocol requires that States Parties criminalize

“trafficking in persons,” as defined by the Protocol, whereas prosecution policies mainly

target the perpetrators. Further, Article 5 requires governments to implement laws that

are broken down into six areas: the adoption of the anti-trafficking law, the adoption of

child trafficking law, the application of other relevant laws, the stringency of penalties,

the level of law enforcement, and the collection of crime statistics. The UNHCR

Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit and the Institute for Statelessness has archived

multiple publications identifying challenges in protecting displaced and stateless

persons, as well as those who are subject to human trafficking. For example, the

Institute for Statelessness authored “The nexus between statelessness and human

trafficking in Thailand,” which illustrates the consequences of statelessness and has a

two-fold focus: to identify the nexus between statelessness and human trafficking, and

second, to identify the nexus between statelessness and human trafficking among hill

tribe people in the Northern part of Thailand.

2) Articles 6 and 7 call on States Parties to adopt specific measures for victim

recovery and to consider adopting measures to allow victims to remain in the country’s

territory in appropriate cases.

3) Article 10 states, “Each State Party shall adopt such measures as may be

necessary, consistent with its legal principles, to establish the liability of legal persons

for participation in serious crimes involving an organized criminal group and for the

offenses established in accordance with the Trafficking Protocol’s Articles 5, 6, 8, and

23.”



43

4) Article 11 applies to the provision of the Palermo Protocol mutatis mutandi,

which requires that “State Parties ensure that criminal sanctions for trafficking in

persons take into account the gravity of the exploitation offense.”

The Palermo Convention’s obligatory tenets, prevention, protection, and the promotion

of prosecution, commonly referred to as the 3-P index of measures and mechanisms,

serve as an intervention to human trafficking, smuggling, and exploitation of children on

land, territorial waters, and the high seas (mare liberum—international waters).

The 3-P index serves as a globally evaluated government anti-trafficking system

to evaluate three policy dimensions: prevention, protection, and prosecution. It is

structured to identify and to provide protection for victims of human trafficking. The 3-P

index suggests that the policy focus is on human rights and the actual implementation of

written laws that are essental to achieving the policy objectives. Each of the 3P policy

areas are evaluated on a 5-point scale. Each policy index is aggregated to the overall

3P Anti-trafficking Index as the sum (score 3-15). Under each policy index, one is an

indicator of no-compliance and five represents full-compliance. As such, they have the

capacity to avert and mitigate high-risk situations associated with vulnerable populations

in forced migration, stateless refugee and stateless non-refugee status, when displaced

due to human rights violations and support the essential elements of the four pillars of

legal empowerment.

This article has shown that the

legal empowerment of the stateless

can be achieved through multiple

means, whether through the use of the

law to prevent particular actions or

events from occurring; or by balancing global human rights concerns with criminal

justice for vulnerable populations who have become displaced, stateless refugees, and

stateless non-refugees. Member states can further enhance prevention and protection

by promoting awareness-raising programmes for policymakers, criminal justice

practitioners, authorities for border and immigration, field labour inspectors, legal and

health practitioners, NGOs, advocates, and social workers, among others in the tireless

efforts to address multiple forms of exploitation of vulnerable populations. The stateless,

despite their general poverty and marginalization, can use domestic legal tools, as well

as those found in the international legal sphere, to achieve legal empowerment and

influence decisions that affect them.

Please direct inquiries about “Statelessness and the struggle to close the gap” to Tanya Faye Herring ([email protected]).

“the legal empowerment of the stateless can be achieved through multiple means”




44

Voluntary Statelessness: Reflections on Implications for International Relations and Political Theory Jocelyn Kane1, Director, Canadian Centre on Statelessness

Introduction Statelessness has been described as a life of destitution, exploi-

tation, and limbo (Asylum Aid 2017). Being stateless means that

one generally does not possess identity documents or the ca-

pacity to obtain them. Because of this, stateless persons are

ineligible to leave their country or enter another, unable to access health care or educa-

tion, have difficulties in obtaining legal and legitimate employment, are often forced to

live in sub-standard housing, and are often subject to lengthy detention and deportation

orders that typically cannot be enforced (UNHCR 2017). However, it is because nation-

ality2 is required in order to access political and judicial processes and even basic hu-

man rights that statelessness is of such consequence.

Yet there are individuals and groups who choose to be stateless, to live “off the

grid,” content with the inability to access the rights associated with citizenship. We do

not know how many of these people exist, nor do we have an idea about how to “deal”

with them, whether in the immediate term in the contexts of public policy and interna-

tional law, or more fundamentally in terms of membership and belonging in today’s

state-sovereign world. Below I present a brief overview of voluntary statelessness,

demonstrating the diversity in individual and group cases. This is followed by reflections

on possible implications on four key concepts in international relations and political the-

ory: sovereignty, global governance, obligation, and membership. I conclude with con-

siderations on areas of further research.

Voluntary Statelessness

Despite bountiful experiences of the belonging and inclusion of non-residents at the

sub-state level (Blitz and Lynch 2011, Landolt and Goldring 2015, Ní Mhurchú 2015),

membership is still governed by national law. How individuals and states interact is for

the most part straightforward; they adhere to the rights and responsibilities prescribed

within set geographical boundaries. Modernised in liberal political theory this “social

contract” is the prerogative of the state to define, meaning that obligations between indi-

1 With thanks to Patti Tamara Lenard, University of Ottawa, and Fiorella Rabafuetti, University of Ottawa for feedback on this idea. 2 In this paper I use citizenship and nationality interchangeably, though I acknowledge the diversity in meanings for each concept, and the theoretical and practical implications of such.



45

viduals and their states differ from country to country.34 An individual’s responsibilities

towards states are complicated when we consider those who reside outside of their

state, and are further obscured for those who are not legal members of any state. How-

ever, the inclusion of the stateless is still conceptualized within the realm of the state

system. It is the state that decides whether a person should be granted membership,

and the state is the leading community into which non-members wish to be included.

But what of those who choose to be stateless? How do we begin thinking of autonomy

and obligation, for example, when our frame of reference is those who have decided to

free themselves of the

obligations toward their

state?

The idea that peo-

ple choose to live outside

of formal membership

and “off the grid” is not new. For millennia people have chosen exile and many have

fared well without formal membership. As the sovereign state system has evolved and

citizenship has become institutionalized, however, formal membership has permeated

the daily aspects of modern life. Yet people continue to eschew citizenship: by renounc-

ing it, refusing to engage with practices of citizenship, or not registering for it in the first

place. The following is a brief overview of some of the individuals and communities who

choose statelessness.

Identity, agency and activism: social and anthropological perspectives There are several individuals who have voluntarily become stateless in the name of

humanitarianism. Mike Gogulski, Garry Davis, and Clark Hanjian have all renounced

their respective citizenships and become stateless in resistance to what they believe are

oppressive state practices in which citizenship renders them complicit. For these indi-

viduals voluntarily becoming stateless is an act of conscience, so as to live responsibly

in the world (Hanjian 2017: 1, Abrahamian 2014, nostate.com n.d., Bhagavan 2012).

These men are characterized as quirky and rebellious, but it is social and global justice

that drives them. Renunciation of one’s citizenship can also be understood as a meas-

ure to achieve personal goals with respect to financial gain and individual liberty. Glen

L. Roberts states that in addition to perceiving allegiance to any state as an affront to

his free will, his anti-government activities in the United States and his desire to free

3 There are several theoretical approaches to the ‘social contract’. These span centuries and categorise persons differently including subjects, citizens, members, and individuals, among others. For the purpose of this paper I use the term individuals and I refer to the parties of the ‘social contract’ generally as indi-viduals and states. 4 An attempt to define the rights and responsibilities of states can be seen in the 1933 Montevideo Con-vention on the Rights and Duties of States.

“Yet people continue to eschew citizenship: by renouncing it, refusing to engage with practices of citizenship, or not registering for it in the first place”



46

himself of the ‘burden’ of adhering to U.S. financial requirements (tax law) motivated

him to become stateless (Berwick 2015, glr.com n.d.).

Then there is political activism against one’s own state. Some stateless Tibetans in In-

dia have chosen to apply for refugee status abroad (and therefore acquire a path to citi-

zenship), while others have chosen to remain stateless in India. Both groups’ choices

are influenced by the role citizenship can play in assisting them with their political

quests. For those who remain stateless in India, foreign citizenship loses its value as

they believe that they are better equipped to affect political change and the freedom of

their people in Tibet without it (Hess 2006). Entire communities have also resisted the

state. James C. Scott (2010) tells us about the Zomia peoples of Southeast Asia who

have resisted the state system for centuries. These people have adapted their ways of

life in active resistance to the state authorities, resulting in a distinct agro-culture char-

acterized by living and migrating in the hills of South East Asia (Scott 2010).

Resistance, and autonomy from the state: political and legal perspectives Bloom (2017) tells us of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy in Southeastern Canada

and Northeastern United States who claim their own nation status complete with identity

documents and systems of governance. The Confederacy rejects North American colo-

nisation but has created its own parallel sovereign system that mandates its own mem-

bership practices. Resistance to membership and the state system cannot be under-

stood here in absolute terms—it is resistance to the colonial state system that is of con-

cern to the Confederacy, not the individual-state relationship itself.

The Freemen of the Land present an interesting case whereby this community

uses state law to demonstrate that they are not, in fact, citizens of their respective

states. They claim that the law and the practices that evidence it, such as registering

one’s birth, paying taxes, or receiving a pension, are actually one side of a contract, and

it is only when one engages with these practices that one consents to that contract and

becomes a citizen (UCLUW 2017, FreeMan Society of Canada 2012). For the Freemen,

it is the social contract itself that they challenge, though they do not reject the notion of

membership in a community.5 Despite being characterised as radicals and freeloaders,

5 Without empirical research it is difficult to know whether the Freemen of the Land are legally stateless or whether their chosen way of life is a statelessness of the figurative kind. De jure statelessness is unlikely given that for one to renounce United States citizenship they must be outside of the country (Immigration

“Mike Gogulski, Garry Davis, and Clark Hanjian have all re-nounced their respective citizenships and become stateless in re-

sistance to what they believe are oppressive state practices in which citizenship renders them complicit”



47

this group brings to our attention the relationship between resistance and autonomy,

and the legitimacy of the contract between the state and its peoples.

This rather fleeting overview presents a diverse group of legal statuses that exist

both inside and outside of the boundaries of membership. All of these cases are united,

however, in two predominant ways: firstly, by resistance to the “political” as an illegiti-

mate occupier of one’s sense of justice; and secondly, through a claim to individual or

community sovereignty. Each of these accounts highlights issues related to the “micro”

and “macro” levels of individual-state relations including social, economic, political, and

legal identities, and rationales concerning taking control of one’s relationship to the

state. These cases raise several questions with respect to individual-society-state rela-

tions relating to membership, sovereignty, autonomy, oppression, radical politics, agen-

cy, self-determination, and acts of (non)citizenship.

Implications for International Relations and Political Theory The purpose of this piece is to reflect on how voluntary statelessness may interact with

international relations and political theory. The term voluntary statelessness itself is an

apt introduction to this phenomenon. How can we ensure one has truly volunteered to

become stateless? How is such consent perceived through time and space, and be-

tween individuals and groups? What role does duress play in such decisions?6 Fur-

thermore, are these individuals and groups legally stateless? Should this be tested

amongst those who desire to be ‘hidden’ and, if so, how? I set aside these concerns

and turn to the ways in which these experiences encourage us to think about sovereign-

ty, global governance, obligation, and membership.

Sovereignty Sovereignty is a long standing principle in international relations and is considered by

some to be the building block of the modern state system (Krasner 2001: 230). The firm

but delicate balance of power between states allows each to control their internal affairs,

determine who is allowed to enter and remain in the country, and the obligations mem-

and Nationality Act §. 349(a)(5)), and Canada requires one to have a second nationality before it will facil-itate renunciation of its citizenship (§. 9(1)(a) Citizenship Act, R.S.C, 1985, c. C-29). Freemen also advo-cate retaining one’s birth certificate as it is “the only proof you are a live natural born human/person” (FreeMan Society of Canada 2012). 6 For a look at the role duress plays in renouncing citizenship see Lauer 2006. Yaser Esam Hamdi was born in the United States but lived most of his life in Saudi Arabia, a citizen of both countries. He was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for suspected terrorist activities against the United States. He was released from Guantanamo Bay in 2004 and repatriated to Saudi Ara-bia on the condition that he renounce his United States citizenship. Though Hamdi was not rendered stateless due to his renunciation of U.S. citizenship, this case raises concerns over the practice of de-manding ‘voluntary’ renunciation in exchange for one’s freedom. This speaks to the broader themes of being caught between two places of ‘non-freedom’ and having to choose between the two.



48

bers have towards it. Yet, as the cases outlined above demonstrate, the voluntarily

stateless are claiming their own sovereignty in a challenge to the state system. Rooted

in liberal notions of self-ownership, individual sovereignty is linked to anarchist revolt

against state power (Hoffman 1998), and generally implies autonomy from external au-

thority.7

I would like to make an important distinction between autonomy from the state

and autonomy despite the state. Whereas autonomy despite the state is demonstrated

through critical acts of agency within the confines of state legitimacy, autonomy from the

state is that which is exercised by those who reject the state system as an affront to

their personal liberty. Perhaps an analogy will help clarify the difference. An undocu-

mented person residing in a country irregularly is violating that country’s law and is,

therefore, subject to detention and removal. By participating in the underground econo-

my, purchasing and paying taxes on goods, and participating in their communities,8

these internal outsiders are autonomous in so far as they are able to avoid the detection

of state authorities. Such autonomous acts of citizenship (Isin 2017) are exercised with-

in the boundaries of the state, which are seen as legitimate, and typically these people

desire formal membership in their host country. Autonomy from the state occurs when

one renounces their citizenship in favor of statelessness, because they see the state as

illegitimate.9

From this we can ask a number of questions that

bridge international relations and political theory. How

does individual sovereignty interact with the rights-

responsibilities contract between the individual and the

state? How can we understand the relationship be-

tween the individual and society if one prioritizes one-

self over the collective? If resistance to belonging to a

state and disregard of systems of law are a fact of life

for some, what does this hold for the sovereign state

system as we know it?

7 For a synthesis of the concepts of sovereignty and individual liberty and a subsequent conceptualisation of individual sovereignty, see Ilievski, 2015. 8 Despite the ‘hopelessness’ of statelessness, is has been demonstrated that involuntarily stateless peo-ple are able to access, in some way, their ‘life needs’ in the face of not possessing formal rights (Redclift 2013). This typically occurs through the development of support networks both within and outside of na-tional contexts (Baser and Swain 2010; Cons 2012; Mwangi 2017; Hess 2006). 9 This distinction can be understood further if we turn our attention to postanarchist thought. Newman argues that central to postanarchism is the notion of a ‘libertarian politics’, “a politics that seeks autonomy from the state and rejects the idea of representation within the formal channels of political power” (New-man 2011: 314). Distinct from liberal individuality, this ‘libertarian moment’ is the “ultimate ethical and political expression of the twin imperatives of equality and liberty that constitute the very language of emancipation” (Ibid.), and which “cannot be fully realized within the framework of the state” (Newman 2011: 315). The state’s restriction of liberty and equality through oppressing autonomy and self-determination through hierarchical principles of obedience demands a rethinking of politics outside of the state – a politics that is autonomous from the state (Ibid).

“Autonomy from the state occurs when

one renounces their citizenship in favor of statelessness, because they see the state as

illegitimate”



49

Global Governance International and domestic advocacy efforts against statelessness are deeply rooted in

the long-standing principle that everyone has the right to a nationality. Article 15 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights has provided a foundation for states and advo-

cates alike to resolve situations of statelessness (UN General Assembly 1948), and the

right to a nationality has been incorporated in no less than seventeen international hu-

man rights instruments (CCS 2018). The right to a nationality, like the principle of sov-

ereignty, is the status quo when it comes to, at the very least, individual-state relations

and, notwithstanding gaps in the Declaration with respect to accessing nationality, it

seems it is non-negotiable.

This raises an interesting question regarding the apparent rift between interna-

tional law, which is designed to protect from the thorns of statelessness, and philosoph-

ical ideas of free will. If a consequence of sovereignty is the right to a nationality, would

individual sovereignty not demand the right to non-nationality? What can the experienc-

es of the voluntarily stateless tell us of the claim to statelessness? If we have a legiti-

mate right to a nationality, what is preventing us from having a right to non-nationality?

What would the right to non-nationality look like in practice? Could it be governed by

international institutions and states given that all individuals live in some state, regard-

less of their desire to belong to none of them? How would rights be distributed and ac-

cessed given one’s non-membership? There are

plenty of contemporary examples that can speak to

this, namely the “stateless person status,” sanctu-

ary city policies, and residency based rights. These

rights, however, are granted under the assumption

that full or partial membership is sought, certainly

not rejected.

Obligation

Individual-state relations are governed by the ubiquitous social contract, wherein the

individual obeys the laws of the land in exchange for state protection. In some way this

includes all non-citizen residents. Undocumented and stateless persons, however, pre-

sent a challenge to this relationship as, with some exceptions, they have not been

granted permission to reside in the state. As non-status stateless persons do not enjoy

at times even basic state protections, including access to legal assistance and freedom

from arbitrary detention (ENS 2017), their experience highlights the disconnect between

a state’s duty to protect and the stateless person’s inability to fully obey.

In this light, in what ways are the voluntarily stateless obliged to their host states?

We can look at this in at least two ways. If a voluntarily stateless person has status, but

not full membership in their host country, is there a line to be drawn relating to their ob-

“If we have a legitimate right to a nationality, what is preventing us

from having a right to non-nationality?”



50

ligation? Surely a voluntarily stateless person with residency in a given country would

be expected to obey criminal law and pay taxes on goods and income, but can they be

expected to participate in compulsory military service, or jury duty? And what of those

voluntarily stateless individuals who do not hold legal residency? What are the expecta-

tions that can be reasonably placed upon them?

On the other side of the duty coin, what obligations does a state have towards

voluntarily stateless persons who reside on their territory? Does a voluntarily stateless

person renounce with their citizenship their ‘human’ rights to health care and education,

for example? Does a state’s moral duty, typically reserved for refugees, extend to those

who choose to exist outside of the purview of the state? This dilemma has presented

itself as it relates to undocumented people, but the difference here is that undocument-

ed people are citizens of somewhere. It can be generally assumed that they have mere-

ly reprioritized the state which they choose to obey. They have not renounced the idea

of obligation in totality. What can this tell us about how the state should interact with

those residing in a polity which they at the same time reject?

Membership From republication values of public participation to liberal individuality to post-modern

perspectives on belonging, membership is a deeply contested idea. But what unites

these myriad positions is that there is value in belonging at some level.

Voluntary statelessness thus presents a unique challenge to what we know about

how shared values are perceived. Choosing to disengage from the state system is not

only an act of resistance against the state’s omnipresence, but more importantly, for the

individual it is a provocative statement against the notion of shared values, and for

communities it can be seen as a challenge to the disconnect between their values and

those of the state in which they reside.

Shared values have guided community development for millennia. They sustain

us in times of conflict, differentiate between cultures, and contribute to what some refer

to as the strength of diversity. Voluntary statelessness, therefore, necessitates a re-

thinking of the foundations of political thought referring to, at the very least, participation,

civic virtue, the common good, friendship, and social relations. Western systems of

government are founded upon the notions of representation and equality. What is the

value of political participation if people choose to disengage from systems of represen-

tation?

“Voluntary statelessness, therefore, necessitates a rethink-ing of the foundations of political thought referring to, at

the very least, participation, civic virtue, the common good, friendship, and social relations”



51

In this light it is prudent to consider the notion of ‘statefulness’ and whether state-

lessness is really that dreadful. De Chickera (2014) asks whether citizenship would be

so desired if human rights were guaranteed to those without it. He writes that stateless

persons and citizens alike should be afforded the opportunity to opt for a ‘stateless per-

son status’ in the name of the democratic right to choose—a ‘statefulness’ as a non-

citizenship form of membership. Here, choosing to be stateless turns on its head Ar-

endt’s claim that statelessness renders man superfluous (Arendt, 1958: 296).

Conclusion The idea that people choose to be stateless is not unfamiliar (Muižnieks 2013, Ubaid

2015, Who Benefits from Statelessness n.d.), but what we know about voluntary state-

lessness comes largely from personal narratives and media stories. These accounts are

valuable to introducing the phenomenon of voluntary statelessness but they leave us

with several questions. There are numerous areas, for example, where voluntary state-

lessness can interact with public policy: social service provision and access, “mystery”

populations, child welfare, tax revenue, and infrastructure development among other

issues. What of the socio, political, and historical contexts that influence those who have

chosen to be stateless? What are their lived experiences with respect to accessing their

‘life needs’10 in the face of the inability to access citizenship-based social and political

rights? How do gender and family dynamics interact with this phenomenon? The needs

and possibilities for future research in this area are vast. I have attempted to show that

a preliminary look at the literature demonstrates that people are disengaging from the

state purposefully, and for reasons that see the state as illegitimate. Such a bold at-

tempt to challenge the state system is one that surely demands further exploration.

References Abrahamian, Atossa Araxia. 2014. “A Bum Without a Country”. Vice.

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Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Origins of Totalitarianism. 2nd ed. Cleveland, OH: Meridian Books, The World Publishing Company

Asylum Aid. 2017. “Asylum Aid and Statelessness.” Migrants Rights Resource. https://www.asylumaid.org.uk/statelessness/ (June 18, 2018)

Baser, Bahar and Ashok Swain. 2010. “Stateless diaspora groups and their repertoires of na-tionalist activism in host countries.” Journal of International Relations 8(1): 37-60

10 Here “life needs” is defined broadly as access to health care, education, employment, housing, nutri-tion, justice, freedom from duress and undue influence, and the ability to participate in social political insti-tutions, for example community involvement, marriage, and birth registration.


https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bn57dw/a-bum-without-a-country-0000326-v21n5

https://www.asylumaid.org.uk/statelessness/


52

Berwick, Jeff. 2015. “Interview with Glen Roberts: ‘The Stateless Man’.” The Dollar Vigilante. https://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2015/07/20/interview-with-glen-roberts-the-stateless-man.html (June 17, 2018)

Bhagavan, Manu. 2012. “An interview with Garry Davis, the first World Citizen.” News18.com. http://www.news18.com/blogs/india/manu-bhagavan/an-interview-with-garry-davis-the-first-world-citizen-11457-747207.html (June 16, 2018)

Blitz Brad K. and Maureen Lynch. 2011. Statelessness and Citizenship: A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar

Bloom, Tendayi. 2017. “Members of colonised groups, statelessness and the right to have rights.” In Understanding Statelessness. eds. Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss, and Phillip Cole. Abingdon: Routledge

Canadian Centre on Statelessness (CCS). 2018. “International Principles Concerning State-lessness and Nationality.” http://www.statelessness.ca/international-principles.html (June 16, 2018)

Cons, Jason. 2012. “Histories of Belonging(s): Narrating territory, possession and dispossession at the India-Bangladesh border.” Modern Asian Studies 46(3): 527-558

De Chickera, Amal. 2014. “We Need to Talk About the Nation-State.” European Network on Statelessness. Blog Entry. https://www.statelessness.eu/blog/we-need-talk-about-nation-state (June 17, 2018).

European Network on Statelessness (ENS). 2017. Protecting Stateless Persons from Arbitrary Detention: An Agenda for Change. https://www.statelessness.eu/sites/www.statelessness.eu/files/attachments/resources/ENS_LockeInLimbo_Detention_Agenda_online.pdf (June 16, 2018)

FreeMan Society of Canada. 2012. http://freemansocietyofcanada.webs.com/ (June 17, 2018) GLR. n.d. www.glr.com (June 18, 2018) Government of Canada. Citizenship Act, R.S.C, 1985, c. C-29 Government of the United States of America. Immigration and Nationality Act, June 7, 1952, last

amended February 2013 Hanjian, Clark. 2017. My Experiment with Being Stateless.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54d1386ce4b02ef3bcbad526/t/58e7dbac20099ea651956619/1491590061645/Experiment.pdf (June 17, 2018)

Hess, Julia Meredith 2006. “Statelessness and the State: Tibetans, Citizenship, and Nationalist Activism in a Transnational World.” International Migration 44(1): 79-103

Hoffman, J. 1998. Sovereignty. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press Ilievski, Nikola Lj. 2015. “The individual sovereignty: Conceptualization and manifestation”.

Journal of Liberty and International Affairs 1 (2): 1-12Isin, E. 2017. “Performative Citi-zenship.” In The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship. eds. Ayelet Shachar, Rainer Baubock, Irene Bloemraad, and Maarten Vink. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Krasner, Stephen D. 2001. “Abiding Sovereignty.” International Political Science Review 22(3): 229-51

Landolt, Patricia and Luin Goldring. 2015. “Assembling noncitizenship through the work of con-ditionality.” Citizenship Studies 19(8): 853-869

Lauer, Abigail D. 2006. “The Easy Way Out?: The Yaser Hamdi Release Agreement and the United States' Treatment of the Citizen Enemy Combatant Dilemma.” Cornell Law Re-view 91(4): 927-956

Mwangi, Oscar Gakuo. 2017. “Statelessness, ungoverned spaces and security in Kenya.” In Understanding Statelessness. eds. Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss, and Phillip Cole. Abingdon: Routledge

Muižnieks, Nils. 2013. “Human Rights Comment: Governments should act in the best interest of stateless children.” Council of Europe, Commissioner for Human Rights.


https://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2015/07/20/interview-with-glen-roberts-the-stateless-man.html

https://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2015/07/20/interview-with-glen-roberts-the-stateless-man.html

http://www.news18.com/blogs/india/manu-bhagavan/an-interview-with-garry-davis-the-first-world-citizen-11457-747207.html

http://www.news18.com/blogs/india/manu-bhagavan/an-interview-with-garry-davis-the-first-world-citizen-11457-747207.html

http://www.statelessness.ca/international-principles.html

https://www.statelessness.eu/blog/we-need-talk-about-nation-state

https://www.statelessness.eu/blog/we-need-talk-about-nation-state

https://www.statelessness.eu/sites/www.statelessness.eu/files/attachments/resources/ENS_LockeInLimbo_Detention_Agenda_online.pdf

https://www.statelessness.eu/sites/www.statelessness.eu/files/attachments/resources/ENS_LockeInLimbo_Detention_Agenda_online.pdf

http://freemansocietyofcanada.webs.com/

http://www.glr.com/

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54d1386ce4b02ef3bcbad526/t/58e7dbac20099ea651956619/1491590061645/Experiment.pdf

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54d1386ce4b02ef3bcbad526/t/58e7dbac20099ea651956619/1491590061645/Experiment.pdf


53

https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/governments-should-act-in-the-best-interest-of-stateless-childr-1?desktop=true (June 18, 2018)

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space. Milton Park: Routledge Scott, James. C. 2009. The Art of Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast

Asia. Yale University Press Ubaid, Mir. 2015. “Shadows of themselves: Portraits of statelessness.” Al Jazeera.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/12/shadows-portraits-statelessness-151203081737940.html (June 18, 2018)

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Please direct inquiries about “Voluntary Statelessness” to Jocelyn Kane

([email protected]).


https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/governments-should-act-in-the-best-interest-of-stateless-childr-1?desktop=true

https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/governments-should-act-in-the-best-interest-of-stateless-childr-1?desktop=true

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http://www.unhcr.org/59f747404.pdf

http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3712c.html

http://berlinergazette.de/statelessness/



54

Policy Brief

“Legal Identity” and Biometric Identification in Africa

Bronwen Manby, Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE Human Rights, and research fellow Middle East Centre, London School of Economics There is near-universal consensus on the importance of “legal

identity” as a foundation for economic development and re-

spect for rights. But insufficient attention is paid to the risks

attendant on a drive to roll out biometric identification systems

in fulfilment of this promise.

“Legal identity” and the Sustainable Development Goals

In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development

Goals (SDGs), an ambitious set of objectives for international development to replace

and expand upon the fifteen-year-old Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted

in 2000. Goal 16 of the SDGs is one of the broadest: “Promote peaceful and inclusive

societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effec-

tive, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”. Each Goal has a set of more

detailed targets: Target 16.9 requires that states should, by 2030, “provide legal identity

for all, including birth registration”. The consensus in development policy circles on the

benefits of stronger identification systems appears now complete—certified by the

World Bank’s decision to establish a program on “identification for development”.

This policy agenda is founded on solid scholarship investigating the importance

of registration and identification for state consolidation and effectiveness (for example,

Caplan and Torpey 2001, Szreter 2007, Breckenridge and Szreter 2012). State consoli-

dation and effectiveness, of course, also has its downsides. Other scholars have em-

phasized the equal contribution that registers of people and property have made to-

wards the enabling of authoritarian regimes (most influentially, Scott 1999), and the us-

es of identification for surveillance and control (Torpey 2000, Bennett and Lyon 2008).

There is still much confusion over the exact meaning of the SDG’s commitment;

and thus still much at stake in the way it is interpreted. While birth registration is well-

understood, and has been the subject of international agreements and technical assis-

tance over some decades, “legal identity” has no definition in international law and there

is no clarity on what its delivery would require (Gelb and Manby 2016, Manby 2017).

Perhaps most importantly, there is confusion as to whether the SDGs require the

issue of some sort of government-backed national identity card, or if birth registration is



55

sufficient. While national identity cards are completely routine in many countries in the

world, especially those belonging to the civil law tradition (including former French,

Spanish and Portuguese territories), they are less likely to exist in countries where the

common law heritage is dominant (former British territories—except those where pass-

es were imposed on the “native” population). There remains strong resistance to the

idea of such a requirement in the UK itself, as well as in the USA.

The discussion of these objectives and what they imply has been complicated by

the sudden availability of relatively affordable digital and biometric technology, from

electronically recorded fingerprints and iris scans, to the mysteries of the “blockchain”

and the world of virtual online identities. Biometric features are rapidly being incorpo-

rated into government-backed identity cards, while private-sector-led initiatives are at-

tracting public funds for decentralized identification not necessarily linked to government

identity documents—such as the ID2020 Alliance (led by the private sector but involving

UN agencies) “to empower individuals, enable economic opportunity and advance glob-

al development by increasing access to digital identity” (ID2020 Alliance 2017). These

developments have fueled a wave of publications on the “identification revolution” and

the role of digital identity in “leapfrogging” the legacy of paper-based systems (World

Bank 2016; Gelb and Diofasi Metz 2018). The World Bank has led a process of adopt-

ing a set of “principles on identification” to serve as standards in order to “maximiz[e] the

benefits of identification systems for sustainable development while mitigating many of

the risks” (Desai et al. 2017)

Trends in identification systems in Africa

Many, if not most, Africans do not currently hold any state-issued document that is offi-

cial proof of their existence, or of their citizenship of the state to which they “belong”. An

average of 56 percent of sub-Saharan African children under five years old did not have

birth registration as of 2013 (85 million children), a critical step for the access of those

children to many government services as well as the establishment of their rights as

adults. In at least eight countries (Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Somalia,

Tanzania and Zambia), less than 20 percent of children had been registered (UNICEF

2013).

In line with the SDG agenda, a central part of recent efforts to strengthen state

capacity in Africa has thus been to strengthen identification systems, including both civil

registration of births and deaths (and significant civil status events in between: marriag-

es, divorces, adoptions) and population registries backed by the issue of a national

“While national identity cards are completely routine in many countries in the world… they are less likely to exist in coun-

tries where the common law heritage is dominant”



56

identity card (as well as voter registration). Whereas only a minority of the 54 African

states (55, including the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) had in place a national

identity card system at independence, this number has rapidly increased in recent

years. At the same time, identity cards are being rolled out where they did not previous-

ly exist, and paper-based systems are being upgraded. Today, almost all countries in

Africa have in place a formal requirement for national ID to complement a civil registra-

tion agency, and more than half of national ID cards are based on biometric technolo-

gies.

Countries with laws and institutions establishing requirements for birth registration and identification in Africa, 1960-2015 Source: World Bank Identification for Development Dataset, available at http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/id4d-dataset.

There have been some efforts to highlight the potential dangers posed by these new

technologies in the absence of legal frameworks for data protection and privacy—even

if the roll-out of new technologies largely proceeds regardless (see, for example, Priva-

cy International 2018; World Bank 2017; for a listing of those countries with laws in

place, see the Identification for Development (ID4D) Global Dataset 2018).

Less remarked, however, is the assumption underlying these initiatives that the

effort to roll out a universal national identification system is mainly a technical one, de-

pendent on resources, administrative effectiveness, and a regulatory framework to

guide questions such as access to and interoperability of databases. Yet identification

of citizens is above all a legal and political process, unrelated to the technology used;

and the history of Africa creates particular reason to be cautious.


http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/id4d-dataset

http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/id4d-dataset


57

Who belongs where?

The African continent’s famously arbitrary borders, and history and current reality of mi-

gration, coupled with the weak administrative capacity that is equally the legacy of the

colonial state, have made the management of “who belongs where” particularly chal-

lenging, even by comparison with other post-colonial regions of the world (see, for ex-

ample, Bayart and Geschiere 2001, Geschiere and Jackson 2006, Dorman, Hammett,

and Nugent 2007, Geschiere 2009, Bøås and Dunn 2013).

In this context, a push to upgrade and insist on the universal application of identi-

fication systems that definitively distinguishes citizens from foreigners—between those

whose identity card gives them access to rights and those denied such documents—

carries serious risks as well as possible rewards.

Whereas previously in Tanzania or Uganda, for example, access to health care

or to schooling for children did not depend on official proof of identity, since 2016 a na-

tional ID card is needed for these and other purposes (Manby 2018a). Yet, thanks to

citizenship laws that are interpreted to provide no rights based on birth in the territory

but rather to be based on ethnicity, boxes of applications remain unprocessed, with no

means of resolving doubts over entitlement—even if the applicants have no effective

connection to any other state. In the absence of the civil law apparatus of court over-

sight of such decisions, legislation has established no effective mechanism to resolve

these cases, leaving those affected likely in indefinite limbo. In other countries, such as

Mauritania or Sudan, governments are deliberately using the introduction of new popu-

lation registers—touted as major steps towards modernization and inclusion—as tools

to denationalize those whose membership of the polity is unwelcome (Manby 2018b).

Those at risk of greater exclusion by the drive to identification encompass, in the African

context, pre-independence and other long-term migrants and their descendants; mem-

bers of ethnic groups living in border regions and found in more than one country, in-

cluding nomads; vulnerable children in different categories, especially those separated

from their parents; and other marginalized minorities that exist in any society.

We end up with a paradox: documentation of “legal identity” is supported as a

route to economic empowerment and inclusion, framed almost as an additional public

service that the state must deliver. Yet this process of providing official documentation is

dependent on existing legal and institutional frameworks governing citizenship and im-

“If these underlying frameworks are not adapted to a context where most people have never had proof of their right to live in a country, the drive to provide and require identification docu-

ments can greatly exacerbate the exclusion of some even as it in-creases inclusion for others”



58

migration status. If these underlying frameworks are not adapted to a context where

most people have never had proof of their right to live in a country, the drive to provide

and require identification documents can greatly exacerbate the exclusion of some even

as it increases inclusion for others. Even if some of the hyped identification initiatives

are delinked from such frameworks, no virtual identity validated through decentralized

digital means can substitute for government-issued proof of rights in the country where

a person lives (Manby 2016).

There is increasing awareness of the dangers of surveillance and misuse of data

in our digital world, but even less capacity to mitigate these risks in Africa than else-

where. An equal focus is needed from scholars as well as policy-makers on the underly-

ing laws and procedures that establish rights both to citizenship itself, and to fair adjudi-

cation where citizenship is in doubt. This need is not created by the use of biometric or

digital records, but made more urgent by the seduction and power of the new technolo-

gies. While it has been common to argue that citizenship and immigration law has had

limited influence on identity politics in Africa, the drive to create universal identification

systems will greatly increase its force—for good or for ill.

References Bayart, Jean-François, and Peter Geschiere. 2001. “Introduction to special issue: « J’étais là

avant »: Problématiques politiques de l’autochtonie.” Critique internationale 10(1): 126. Bennett, Colin J., and David Lyon, eds. 2008. Playing the Identity Card: Surveillance, Security

and Identification in Global Perspective. London ; New York: Routledge. Bøås, Morten, and Kevin Dunn. 2013. Politics of Origin in Africa: Autochthony, Citizenship and

Conflict. London: Zed Books. Breckenridge, Keith, and Simon Szreter, eds. 2012. Registration and Recognition: Document

ing the Person in World History. Oxford: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press.

Caplan, Jane, and John Torpey, eds. 2001. Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.

Desai, Vyjayanti T., Alan Gelb, Julia Clark, and Anna Diofasi Metz. 2017. “Ten Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development.” World Bank. http://blogs.worldbank.org/ic4d/ten-principles-identification-sustainable-development.

Dorman, Sara, Daniel Hammett, and Paul Nugent, eds. 2007. Making Nations, Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa. Leiden: Brill.

Gelb, Alan, and Anna Diofasi Metz. 2018. Identification Revolution: Can Digital ID Be Harnessed for Development? Washington DC: Center for Global Development.

Gelb, Alan, and Bronwen Manby. 2016. “Has Development Converged with Human Rights? Implications for the Legal Identity SDG.” Views from the Center, Center for Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/blog/has-development-converged-human-rights-implications-legal-identity-sdg.

Geschiere, Peter. 2009. The Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Af rica and Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Geschiere, Peter, and Stephen Jackson. 2006. “Introduction to Special Issue: Autochthony and



59

the Crisis of Citizenship: Democratization, Decentralization, and the Politics of Belonging.” Af-rican Studies Review 49(2): 1–7.

ID2020 Alliance. 2017. Committed to Improving Lives through Digital Identity. Identification for Development (ID4D) Global Dataset. 2018. World Bank. Manby, Bronwen. 2016. Identification in the Context of Forced Displacement. Washington,

D.C.: World Bank, Identification for Development Initiative. ———. 2017. “Legal Identity for All and Childhood Statelessness.” In The World’s Stateless:

Children, eds. Laura van Waas and Amal de Chickera. Tilburg, NL: Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion.

———. Forthcoming. 2018a. Citizenship and Statelessness in the East African Community. Ge neva: UNHCR.

———. Forthcoming. 2018b. Citizenship in Africa: The Law of Belonging. London: Hart Pub. Privacy International. 2018. State of Privacy: Kenya. Scott, James C. 1999. Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condi

tion Have Failed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press. Szreter, Simon. 2007. “The Right of Registration: Development, Identity Registration, and So

cial Security—A Historical Perspective.” World Development 35(1): 67–86. Torpey, John. 2000. The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UNICEF. 2013. Every Child’s Birth Right: Inequities and Trends in Birth Registration. Geneva:

United Nations. World Bank. 2016. World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends. Washington, DC. ———. 2017. The State of Identification Systems in Africa: A Synthesis of Country Assess

ments. Washington, D.C.

Please direct inquiries about the Policy Brief to Bronwen Manby ([email protected]).




60

Research Institute Profile

IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre

The Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GDMAC) was established by the UN Migra-

tion Agency (IOM) in Germany, Berlin, in 2015 following the invitation from the German

Government. Since its creation, the Centre quickly gained a key influence in the field of

migration data through implementation of more than 14 projects, hosting of 2 global

conferences, 33 workshops, 12 field trainings and 64 publications. More than 400.000

visitors downloaded GMDAC reports. The Centre has three strategic goals:

1. Inform global migration governance based on data and evidence

2. Support data capacity-building in IOM member states

3. Promote evidence-based IOM programming

The staff pursues these goals through three key areas of work:

Knowledge management GMDAC is promoting a better understanding of, access to, and use of global migration

data. It attempts to help civil society, policy makers and academics to make sense of an

increasingly complex and scattered migration data landscape. One of the Centre’s flag-

ship projects in this area is the Global Migration Data Portal. In mid-2018, the Portal

was referenced in objective 1 of the draft for the Global Compact on Migration, currently

being negotiated at the UN level.

Jasper Dag Tjaden, Survey & Data Officer

Frank Laczko, Director


https://migrationdataportal.org/


61

➢ 70 indicators from 15 sources

➢ 20+ briefings explaining pros and

cons of available data

➢ 90+ guidance/handbook reports for

NSOs

➢ Section for measuring migration-

related SDGs

➢ Leading experts discussion of current

issues (Blog)

The Portal aims to serve as a unique access point to timely, comprehensive migration

statistics and reliable information about migration data globally. The site is designed to

help policy makers, national statistics officers, journalists and the general public inter-

ested in the field of migration to navigate the increasingly complex landscape of interna-

tional migration data, currently scattered across different organisations and agencies.

Especially in critical times, such as those faced today, it is essential to ensure

that responses to migration are based on sound facts and accurate analysis. By making

the evidence about migration issues accessible and easy to understand, the Portal aims

to contribute to a more informed public debate.

The Portal was launched in December 2017 and is managed and developed

by IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC), with the guidance of its Ad-

visory Board, and was supported in its conception by the Economist Intelligence Unit

(EIU). The Portal is supported financially by the Governments of Germany, the United

States of America and the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

Capacity building

International migration data is often not available in low-income settings. Even if it is

available, the resources are not always there to properly analyse and report the data.

GMDAC is enhancing IOM's efforts to meet governments' requests for migration data

capacity-building.

Working with IOM Missions across the globe, GMDAC’s capacity building activi-

ties aim to support policy-makers, national ministries, regional bodies, NSOs and other

stakeholders to improve migration data and the evidence base at national and regional

levels. The approach taken is one of co-production and sustainability, and is informed

by the broader sustainable development framework: developing action plans and mate-

rials with government buy-in; integrating recommendations into national strategies and

legislation; improving communication and work-flow between data producers (ministries


http://gmdac.iom.int/


62

and NSOs) and data users (policy-makers, journalists, academics); migration survey

development; data analysis trainings; taking a practical approach to the what can be

achieved for meaningful gains in the short- and longer-term by accounting for the local

context. GMDAC’s capacity building programming can be categorized under four inter-

related priority-areas:

1. Monitoring - Developing systems and practices to improve migration data for policy, including monitoring progress towards the SDGs.

2. Coordination and systems – Bridging the distance between local practices and international standards, encouraging communication and data-sharing between the producers and users of migration data, whilst addressing bottle-necks and gaps in data, systems and policy, within and across ministries.

3. Technical materials – The production of materials for, and the facilitation of, training workshops and working groups, e.g., guidelines for collect-ing/analysing/sharing migration data, regional action plan.

4. Knowledge-management – Promoting the understanding of, access to, and use of migration data.

As one example, GMDAC worked with the Economic Community of West African States

(ECOWAS) to develop regional guidelines for developing, sharing and using migration

data.

Data analysis

Lastly, GMDAC provides timely analysis of policy-relevant migration issues, including –

for example - missing migrants, migration data infrastructures, irregular migration, vul-

nerable migrants, Big data and migration, or migration potential.

GMDAC also provides hands-on analytical support to IOM missions around the

world in order to make most of the data that field missions collect, especially in the con-

text of human trafficking or voluntary return projects. In addition, GMDAC conducts im-

pact evaluations of IOM projects in the field including on the impact of information cam-

paigns for potential migrants in West and East Africa.


https://missingmigrants.iom.int/

https://gmdac.iom.int/more-than-numbers

https://gmdac.iom.int/four-decades-of-cross-mediterranean-undocumented-migration-to-europe-a-review-of-the-evidence

https://gmdac.iom.int/sites/default/files/Web%20Version%20-%20IOM%20Niger%202016%20Profiling%20Report_EN.pdf

https://gmdac.iom.int/sites/default/files/Web%20Version%20-%20IOM%20Niger%202016%20Profiling%20Report_EN.pdf

https://gmdac.iom.int/data-bulletin-big-data-and-migration

https://gmdac.iom.int/gmdac-data-briefing-measuring-global-migration-potential-2010-2015


63

Please direct inquiries about GMDAC to Frank Laczko ([email protected]) or Jasper Tjaden ([email protected]).





64

Section News

Member Achievements

Alexandra Délano Alonso (The New School)

• Published “From Here and There: Diaspora Policies, Integration and Social Rights beyond Bor-ders.” Oxford University Press, 2018

• Published with Harris Mylonas, “The Microfoundations of Diaspora Poli-tics.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2018

Kristy A. Belton (International Studies Association)

• Served as Co-Program Chair for the

2018 FLACSO-ISA conference held

in Quito, Ecuador

Erik Bleich (Middlebury College)

• Published “Historical Institutionalism and Judicial Decision-Making: Ideas, Institutions, and Actors in French High Court Hate Speech Rulings.” World Politics 70 (1): 53-85, 2018.

• Published with Hasher Nisar and Cara Vazquez. “Investigating Status Hierarchies with Media Analysis: Muslims, Jews, and Catholics in The New York Times and The Guardian Headlines, 1985-2014.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 59 (3): 239-57, 2018.

Elizabeth F. Cohen (Syracuse Universi-ty)

• Published “The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Emmanuel Comte (Vienna School of International Studies)

• Published “The History of the Euro-pean Migration Regime: Germany's Strategic Hegemony.” London & New York: Routledge, 2018.

Ron Hayduk (San Francisco State Uni-versity)

• Published with Marcela García-Castañon. “Xenophobia, Belonging and Agency: Citizenship in Immigrant America,” New Political Science 40 (2): 309-316, 2018.

• Published with Kathleen Coll “Urban Citizenship: Campaigns to Restore Immigrant Voting Rights in the US.” New Political Science 40 (2): 336-352, 2018.

Audie Klotz (Syracuse University)

• Published “Migration.” In Oxford Handbook of International Security, ed. Alexandra Gheciu and William Wohlforth, 442-456 (Oxford University Press, 2018).

• Received the Eminent Scholar award from the ENMISA (Ethnicity, National-ism and Migration) section of the ISA (International Studies Association) at the annual meeting in April.

Willem Maas (Glendon College, York University)

• Published “Boundaries of Political

Community in Europe, the US, and

Canada,” in Richard Bellamy, Joseph

Lacey, Kalypso Nicolaidis, eds., Eu-

ropean Boundaries in Question

(Routledge, 2018).

Helen B. Marrow (Tufts University)

• Published with Tropp, Linda R., Dina G. Okamoto, and Michael Jones-


https://mailex.uni-bamberg.de/owa/redir.aspx?C=1APiHY9JqQunqyvmYNMgkEf2xvwf7_TjvNKdCKjw-tX4Z-zLXufVCA..&URL=https%3a%2f%2fglobal.oup.com%2facademic%2fproduct%2ffrom-here-and-there-9780190688585%3fq%3dalexandra%2520delano%26lang%3den%26cc%3dmx




https://mailex.uni-bamberg.de/owa/redir.aspx?C=jyEIyH7BFcW0du_3ByqRJUsDH2ZFUCaKSbyWKsawWn34Z-zLXufVCA..&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.tandfonline.com%2fdoi%2ffull%2f10.1080%2f1369183X.2017.1409160




65

Correa “How Contact Experiences Shape Welcoming: Perspectives from U.S.-Born and Immigrant Groups.” Social Psychology Quarter-ly 81 (1): 29-47, 2018.

Jeffrey Pugh (University of Massachu-setts)

• Was awarded the 2018 Harold Eu-gene Davis Prize for Best Article by the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies (MACLAS) for his article "Universal Citizenship through the Discourse and Policy of Rafael Correa." Latin American Politics and Society 59 (3): 98-121, 2017.

Alex Sager (Portland State University)

• Published “Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics of Mobility: The Migrant’s-Eye View of the World.” New York, NY: Springer Science+Business Media, 2018.

Caress Schenk (Nazarbayev Universi-ty)

• Published “Why Control Immigration? Strategic Uses of Migration Manage-ment in Russia.” Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.

• Has been promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor of Political Sci-ence at Nazarbayev University.

Sarah Song (University of California)

• Published "Political Theories of Mi-gration." Annual Review of Political Science 21: 385-402, 2018.

Gerasimos Tsourapas (University of Birmingham)

• Published "Authoritarian Emigration States: Soft Power and Cross-Border Mobility in the Middle East.” International Political Science Review 39(3): 400-416, 2018.

• Published with Maria Koinova "How Do Countries of Origin Engage Mi-grants and Diasporas? Multiple Ac-tors and Comparative Perspectives.” International Political Science Re-view 39(3): 311-321, 2018, as the In-troduction to a special edited issue (with Maria Koinova) on "Diasporas and Sending States in World Politics.”

• Published "The Peculiar Practices of ‘Authoritarian Emigration States.” Brit-ish Academy Review 32: 22-24, 2018.

• Was awarded a 2018 Rising Star En-gagement Award by the British Acad-emy for a project on "The Internation-al Politics of Middle East Migration: Problems, Policy, Practice.”

• Was awarded a 2018 Travel-Research-Engagement grant by George Washington University to study “The Politics of Migration Inter-dependence in Lebanon.”

Incoming Officers

Co-President: Elizabeth Cohen, Syra-cuse University (2019-2020)

Secretary: Abigail Williamson, Trinity College (2018-2020)

Council Members: Osman Balkan, Swarthmore College; Loren Colling-wood, University of California, River-side; Rita Nassar, Indiana University (2018-2020)

Newsletter Co-Editors: Fiona Barker, Victoria University of Wellington; Ruxandra Paul, Amherst College (2018-2020)

APSA 2019 Program Co-Chairs: Amy Liu, University of Texas, Austin; Rah-saan Maxwell, University of North Caro-lina, Chapel Hill.


https://mailex.uni-bamberg.de/owa/redir.aspx?C=hxcoPQXrA-7Ahsfge21f3KMd_elU7_56AhDwFkEuGYNikMixYefVCA..&URL=http%3a%2f%2fjournals.sagepub.com%2floi%2fspq





66

Recent Books and Articles Books Colonialism/Postcolonialism

Åkesson, Lisa. 2018. Postcolonial Por-tuguese Migration to Angola: Mi-grants or Masters? Migration, Dias-poras and Citizenship. Cham: Pal-grave Macmillan.

Benson, Michaela, and Karen O'Reilly. 2018. Lifestyle migration and colonial traces in Malaysia and Panama. Mi-gration, Diasporas and Citizenship. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ianniciello, Celeste. 2018. Migrations, arts and postcoloniality in the Medi-terranean. Routledge focus on art history and visual studies. New York: Routledge.

Critical Theory

Ingram, David. 2018. World crisis and underdevelopment: A critical theory of poverty, agency, and coercion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cultural Studies

Fraser, Robert. 2018. Literature, music and cosmopolitanism: Culture as mi-gration. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Demography

Askola, Heli. 2018. Demographic Transformations Of Citizenship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Boucher, Anna, and Justin Gest. 2018. Crossroads: Comparative immigra-tion regimes in a world of demo-graphic change. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.

Diplomacy

Kami, Hideaki. 2018. Diplomacy meets migration: U.S. relations with Cuba during the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gender/LGBTQI

Amit, Hila. 2018. A queer way out: The politics of queer emigration from Is-rael. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Amrith, Megha, and Nina Sahraoui. 2018. Gender, work and migration: Agency in gendered labour settings. Studies in migration and diaspora. Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY: Routledge.

Ogawa, Reiko, Raymond K. H. Chan, Akiko S. Oishi, and Lillian Lih-rong Wang. 2018. Gender, care and mi-gration in East Asia. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sharma, Jeevan Raj. 2018. Crossing the border to India: Youth, migration, and masculinities in Nepal. Philadel-phia, PA: Temple University Press.

Identity Politics

Booker, Sparky. 2018. Cultural ex-change and identity in late medieval Ireland: The English and Irish of the four obedient shires. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



67

Bosworth, Mary, Alpa Parmar, and Yolanda Vázquez. 2018. Race, crim-inal justice, and migration control. Enforcing the boundaries of belong-ing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Honeck, Mischa. 2018. Our frontier is the world: The Boy Scouts in the age of American ascendancy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Karim, Karim H., and Ahmed K. Al-Rawi. 2018. Diaspora and media in Europe: Migration, identity, and inte-gration. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Welborne, Bozena C., Aubrey L. West-fall, Özge Çelik Russell, and Sarah A. Tobin. 2018. The politics of the headscarf in the United States. Itha-ca: Cornell University Press.

Indigenous Studies

Bunten, Alexis Celeste, and Nelson H. H. Graburn. 2018. Indigenous tour-ism movements. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

International Relations

Matlary, Janne Haaland. 2018. Hard power in hard times: Can Europe act strategically? Cham: Palgrave Mac-millan.

Law

Acosta, Diego. 2018. The national ver-sus the foreigner in South America: 200 years of migration and citizen-ship law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lester, Eve. 2018. Making migration law: The foreigner, sovereignty, and the case of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Migration

Barber, Pauline Gardiner, and Winnie Lem. 2018. Migration, temporality, and capitalism: Entangled mobilities across global spaces. Cham: Pal-grave Macmillan.

Cornelissen, Scarlett, and Yōichi Mine. 2018. Migration and agency in a globalizing world: Afro-Asian en-counters. London: Palgrave Macmil-lan.

Czaika, Mathias, ed. 2018. High-skilled migration: Drivers and politics. Ox-ford: Oxford University Press.

Germano, Roy. 2018. Outsourcing wel-fare: How the money immigrants send home contributes to stability in developing countries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Flores, Lori A. 2018. Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican americans, mexican immigrants, and the cali-fornia farmworker movement. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hayes, Matthew F. 2018. Gringolandia: Lifestyle migration under late capi-talism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Schenk, Caress. 2018. Why Control Immigration? Strategic Uses of Mi-gration Management in Russia. To-ronto: University of Toronto Press.

Marschall, Sabine. 2018. Memory, Mi-gration and Travel. Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility. Oxon, New York, NY: Routledge.

Meeus, Bruno, Karel Arnaut, and Bas van Heur. 2018. Arrival Infrastruc-tures: Migration and Urban Social Mobilities. Cham: Palgrave Macmil-lan.

Moffette, David. 2018. Governing Ir-regular Migration: Bordering Culture, Labour, and Security in Spain. Law and Society. Vancouver: UBC Press.



68

Rosenblum, Marc R., and Daniel J. Tichenor. 2012. The Oxford hand-book of the politics of international migration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schreiber, Rebecca Mina. 2018. The undocumented everyday: Migrant lives and the politics of visibility. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ugland, Trygve. 2018. Policy learning from Canada: Reforming Scandina-vian immigration and integration pol-icies. Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.

Refugees

Bihler, Lori Gemeiner. 2018. Cities of refuge: German Jews in London and New York, 1935-1945. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Ghezelbash, Daniel. 2018. Refuge lost: Asylum law in an interdependent world. Cambridge asylum and migra-tion studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Regional Studies

Cheneval, Francis, and Mónica Ferrín, eds. 2018. Citizenship in segmented societies: Lessons for the EU. Chel-tenham, UK, Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Chowdhury, Mehdi, and S. Irudaya Rajan, eds. 2018. South Asian Mi-gration in the Gulf: Causes and Con-sequences. London: Palgrave Mac-millan.

Frowd, Philippe M. 2018. Security at the Borders: Transnational practices and technologies in West Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lagios, Thanasis, Vasia Lekka, and Grigoris Panoutsopoulos. 2018. Bor-ders, Bodies and Narratives of Crisis

in Europe. Cham: Palgrave Macmil-lan.

Ngo, May. 2018. Between humanitari-anism and evangelism in faith-based organisations: A case from the Afri-can migration route. Abingdon, Ox-on, New York, NY: Routledge.

Oliver Bakewell and Loren B Landau (Eds.) 2018. Forging African Com-munities: Mobilities, Integration, and Belonging. Basingstoke: Pal-graveMacmillan

Pennings, Frans, and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, eds. 2018. EU citizenship and social rights: Entitlements and impediments to accessing welfare. Cheltenham, UK, Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Security Studies

Bindenagel Šehović, Annamarie. 2018. Reimagining State and Human Se-curity Beyond Borders. Cham: Pal-grave Pivot.

Transnationalism

Danielson, Michael S. 2018. Emigrants get political: Mexican migrants en-gage their home towns. Oxford: Ox-ford University Press.

Delano, Alexandra. 2018. From here and there: Diaspora policies, integra-tion, and social rights beyond bor-ders. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Francisco-Menchavez, Valerie. 2018. The labor of care: Filipina migrants and transnational families in the digital age. Urbana: University of Il-linois Press.

Gomes, Catherine. 2018. Siloed Diver-sity: Transnational Migration, Digital Media and Social Networks. Singa-pore: Springer Singapore.



69

War

Auslander, Leora, Tara Zahra, and Al-ice Goff. 2018. Objects of war: The material culture of conflict and dis-placement. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Journals

American Behavioral Scientist

Dimitrova, Daniela V., Emel Ozdora-Aksak, and Colleen Connolly-Ahern. 2018. “On the Border of the Syrian Refugee Crisis: Views From Two Dif-ferent Cultural Perspectives.” Ameri-can Behavioral Scientist 62 (4): 532–46. doi:10.1177/0002764218756920.

Glăveanu, Vlad Petre, Constance de Saint-Laurent, and Ioana Literat. 2018. “Making Sense of Refugees Online: Perspective Taking, Political Imagination, and Internet Memes.” American Behavioral Scientist 62 (4): 440–57. doi:10.1177/0002764218765060.

Neumann, Rico, and Patricia Moy. 2018. “You’re (Not) Welcome: The Impact of Symbolic Boundaries, In-tergroup Contact, and Experiences With Discrimination on Immigration Attitudes.” American Behavioral Sci-entist 62 (4): 458–77. doi:10.1177/0002764218760370.

Tirosh, Noam. 2018. “Dominant News Frames, Society’s Memory, and the African Asylum Seekers’ Protest in Israel.” American Behavioral Scien-tist 62 (4): 405–20. doi:10.1177/0002764218759580.

Ethics and International Affairs

Nuti, Alasia. 2018. “Temporary Labor Migration within the EU as Structural Injustice.” Ethics & International Af-fairs 32 (2): 203–25. doi:10.1017/S089267941800031X.

Ypi, Lea. 2018. “Borders of Class: Mi-gration and Citizenship in the Capi-talist State.” Ethics & International Affairs 32 (2): 141–52. doi:10.1017/S0892679418000278.

International Studies Quarterly

Mavelli, Luca. 2018. “Citizenship for Sale and the Neoliberal Political Economy of Belonging.” International Studies Quarterly 46 (3): 15. doi:10.1093/isq/sqy004.

Tsourapas, Gerasimos. 2018. “Labor Migrants as Political Leverage: Mi-gration Interdependence and Coer-cion in the Mediterranean.” Interna-tional Studies Quarterly 44 (3): 3. doi:10.1093/isq/sqx088.

Journal of Common Market Studies

Caporaso, James A. 2018. “Europe's Triple Crisis and the Uneven Role of Institutions: The Euro, Refugees and Brexit.” Journal of Common Market Studies 53 (4): 699. doi:10.1111/jcms.12746.

Lavenex, Sandra. 2018. “‘Failing For-ward’ Towards Which Europe? Or-ganized Hypocrisy in the Common European Asylum System.” Journal of Common Market Studies 56 (5): 1195–1212. doi:10.1111/jcms.12739.

Law and Society Review

Ryo, Emily. 2018. “Representing Immi-grants: The Role of Lawyers in Im-migration Bond Hearings.” Law & Society Rev 52 (2): 503–31. doi:10.1111/lasr.12328.

Political Science Quarterly

Mirilovic, Nikola, and Philip H. Pollock. 2018. “Latino Democrats, Latino Re-publicans and Interest in Country of Origin Politics.” Political Science



70

Quarterly 133 (1): 127–49. doi:10.1002/polq.12734.

PS: Political Science and Politics

García-Castañon, Marcela. 2018. “Building from Within: Family and the Political Membership of Immigrants.” PS: Political Science & Politics 51 (2): 288–92. doi:10.1017/S1049096517002372.

Hooghe, Marc, and Ruth Dassonne-ville. 2018. “Explaining the Trump Vote: The Effect of Racist Resent-ment and Anti-Immigrant Senti-ments.” PS: Political Science & Poli-tics 51 (3): 528–34. doi:10.1017/S1049096518000367.

Medina Vidal, Xavier. 2018. “Immigra-tion Politics in the 2016 Election.” PS: Political Science & Politics 51 (2): 304–8. doi:10.1017/S1049096517002402.

Silva, Andrea. 2018. “Direct-Democracy Rules: The Effect of Di-rect Democracy on State Immigra-tion Legislation.” PS: Political Sci-ence & Politics 51 (2): 298–303. doi:10.1017/S1049096517002396.

Public Opinion Quarterly

Lee, Taeku, and Sunmin Kim. 2018. “The Mechanics of Immigration Polls.” Public Opinion Quarterly 82 (1): 148–70. doi:10.1093/poq/nfx046.

Wilson, David C., and Darren W. Da-vis. 2018. “The Racial Double Standard.” Public Opinion Quarterly 82 (1): 63–86. doi:10.1093/poq/nfx050.

Third World Quarterly

Hewamanne, Sandya. 2018. “Sewing their way up the social ladder? Paths to social mobility and empowerment among Sri Lanka’s global factory

workers.” Third World Quarterly 56 (1): 1–15. doi:10.1080/01436597.2018.1458302.

Politics, Groups, and Identities

Farris, Emily M., and Heather Silber Mohamed. 2018. “Picturing immigra-tion: How the media criminalizes immigrants.” Politics, Groups, and Identities 5 (1): 1–11. doi:10.1080/21565503.2018.1484375.



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APSA Migration and Citizenship Section Officers

Co‐Presidents:

Sara Wallace Goodman, University of California, Irvine

Alexandra Filindra, University of Illinois, Chicago

Secretary:

Daniel Naujoks, Columbia University & The New School

Treasurer:

Gerasimos Tsourapas, University of Birmingham

Council Members:

2016-2018

Fiona Adamson, University of London, SOAS

Ruxandra Paul, Amherst College

Kelsey Norman, University of California, Irvine

2017-2019

Beth Whitaker, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Justin Gest, George Mason University

Beyza Ekin Buyuker, University of Illinois at Chicago

2018 Annual Meeting Program Co-Chairs:

Jeannette Money, University of California, Davis

Tom K. Wong, University of California, San Diego

Newsletter Co-Editors:

Kristy A. Belton, International Studies Association

Marc Helbling, University of Bamberg



72

© 2018 The American Political Science Association. APSA’s Migration and Citizenship Section Newsletter is edited by Kristy A. Belton ([email protected]) and Marc Helbling ([email protected]). Jakob Biernath served as this issue’s editorial assistant. Opinions do not represent the official position of APSA’s Section on Migration and Citi-zenship. Past Newsletters are available to the public free of charge at http://community.apsanet.org/migrationcitizenship/newsletters.




http://community.apsanet.org/migrationcitizenship/newsletters

Documents

Table of Contents · IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre Frank Laczco and Jasper Tjaden 60 Section News 64 Member Achievements 64 Incoming Officers 65 Recent Books and Articles